


The Calling of a Trainer

by Noxy88



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxy88/pseuds/Noxy88
Summary: Daniel always wanted to be a trainer and explore the world. But in a world where religion and myths are reality, he will have to dig deep to achieve his dream as legends pulled from their slumber in the wake of his journey.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: A Cold Start

Anyone who said Sinnoh wasn't a religious country was a liar.

Religion dominated every aspect of the country. The breathtaking temples, mountains, and lakes that drew in tourists? All considered sacred to at least one denomination. The pokemon? Staples in every myth and sermon. The laws? Written entirely off of church doctrine, with city-states having some freedom based on their own denomination.

Sinnoh wasn't like other countries that had a handful of radicals amidst an unbelieving populace. Kanto had the Triumvirate who worshipped the Stormbringers: Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. Johto had the Church of the Phoenix. Hoenn supposedly had Titans of land, sea, and sky, though their existence was never proven.

No, Sinnoh was different. Sinnoh was home to Arceus, the one who shaped the world. It was home to Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, the ancient beings of time, space, and chaos. It was home to the Lake Trio who shaped the minds, hearts, and souls of humanity. It was home to Darkrai and Cresselia, the twins who had dominion of dreams. Heatran who formed volcanoes and Shaymin who kept nature pure.

It had been four hundred years since any of them were seen, but the Church of Arceus - and its different sects - all preached as if they still held some sort of power over the world.

Daniel forced back a sigh as he quietly left his seat and made his way out of the assembly hall. He wasn't sure he could take many more variations of "knowledge is power". He knew that his father wouldn't be happy with him later but he couldn't find it to care. A sharp, wintry gust of wind met him as he exited the temple.

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself to fend off the cold, even though he knew it wouldn't help. Snowpoint snowed ten months of the year. The other two months only managed to get slightly warmer than freezing. The people who lived here just got used to the cold. The few tourists who dared venture this far north always seemed shocked by the relentless snow. They never stayed long. The only people who stayed were those who came for school.

Snowpoint was home to Sinnoh's largest and most acclaimed university. Anyone who wanted a higher education came to Snowpoint University. At least, those smart enough to get in. Snowpoint was chosen to be the home of the college because it was the closest city to the last known resting place of Uxie, the patron god of knowledge. Everything in Sinnoh came back to religion.

It wasn't that Daniel hated religion or was an unbeliever. He believed wholeheartedly that Arceus created the world. It was just frustrating that Snowpoint revered Uxie to such a high extent when he didn't want to pursue a life of education and research.

"Dan, you know your father isn't going to be pleased with you leaving early."

Daniel turned to find his mother behind him. She was tall in comparison to the other women of Snowpoint, standing a few inches shy of six feet. But she also wasn't from here. She followed his father north when he took a job at the university.

"Yeah, I know. Just couldn't take much more of it," he sighed, leaning against the stonewall leading into the church. "I know it's all feeding Dad's dream of me of going to school and I just can't do that. I want to see the world. I wish there was a god of exploration or competition or something so he would understand."

"You know he accepts it, even if he doesn't like it. You are in training and survival classes."

"And it's a week until I'm finished with that and he still-" Daniel was cut off by a flood of people exiting the temple. His father towards the front of the pack.

As expected, his father wasn't happy with him, and made his displeasure known as the three walked slowly through the snow back home. Their house was a modest, two story home with three bedrooms. It sat within easy walking distance from both the church and the university, a blessing considering the constant snow. Snowpoint's historic district and city center was about half an hour east.

"I know you want to be a trainer, Dan, but can't you see that the pursuit of knowledge is the greatest calling of mankind? You could study pokemon and discover something that changes the world. You could work in a lab and do fieldwork and explore the world that way."

Daniel had heard this argument before. In fact, this was the most convincing of all his father's arguments as it did play into his desire to be around pokemon and to explore. It did not, however, quench his thirst for competition. Not many things did this far north as there weren't many sports that were played due to the weather. The two common ones were basketball, which Daniel could care less about, and volleyball, which Daniel was good at but not good enough to make a living off of. Additionally, the Sinnoh League restricted pokemon ownership to people over twenty outside of a handful of extremely docile species like lillipup and skitty.

"Dad, we've had this discussion a dozen times in the last month. That's not me. I want to compete. I want to travel and train. I don't want to be told where to go by a professor. Maybe one day that will change, but until then, I'm going to be a trainer." Daniel's father gave a frustrated huff but let the matter drop.

Daniel was thankful that his father's only real disagreement was one about callings. He had heard stories of people whose parents feared for their safety to the point of locking them in rooms and putting tracking software on their phones. He would probably run away with only the clothes on his back if that was the case. At least his parents respected his desires even if they disagreed.

Really, for as much pressure he felt from his father to go to school rather than become a trainer, he knew that his parents were supportive. Though the Church of Uxie taught that the pursuit of knowledge was the highest of all callings, they would never sanction forcing people into that life. That, at least, was a central tenet of the Church of Arceus, of which all religion in the region stemmed from and held to. Every man was free to choose his own calling. His calling happened to be becoming a trainer.

The following week was slower than Daniel imagined it would be. Combining exams with the excitement of receiving his trainer's license and pokedex was a pretty harsh combination. The training and survival program was a state funded and state mandated program for anyone who wanted a trainer's license.

For the first couple centuries of the league's existence, kids could become trainers at the age of ten. It was changed to fifteen and then finally to twenty around seventy years ago in order to better prepare people for the physical and mental demands of traveling in a world full of dangerous creatures. In addition to the age limit, the league also required every aspiring trainer to complete a two year survival course after graduating from high school. With these implementations, the death rate of first year trainers dropped dramatically.

The class wasn't terribly difficult. It covered basic survival skills such as starting a fire, pitching a tent, basic first aid and navigating. They had live trials where the group would camp a short distance from the city. There they were taught to hunt and forage. All of the skills taught, Daniel was glad he learned under a controlled environment rather than alone in the wild. As much as he felt like he would have managed fine, he wasn't so arrogant to completely disregard the wealth of knowledge he was handed.

Still, the week passed with little fanfare. He passed all the exams and got his pokedex which would also act as his trainer's license. The handheld device was the most important piece of equipment a trainer could have, barring the pokeball. It contained a live database of all known pokemon across every region. It provided his credentials as a trainer. It acted as a smartphone, and dozens of other applications.

There was no graduation ceremony for the handful of people in the class. Despite leaving high school in a class of over two hundred people, the survival class was only a meager five, one of which was older than Daniel because he went to college before changing his mind on what he wanted to do.

For whatever reason, no one in the class was particularly close. Daniel knew that all four planned to leave Snowpoint upon catching their first pokemon. He was planning to stay and train at the gym until he felt he could challenge Leader Andri for the badge. Daniel didn't see the purpose to leave a city without getting the badge. His classmates felt like the gym would be easier to challenge later with a more diverse team.

With no ceremony and no particular bond with his classmates, Daniel settled for a night of volleyball to celebrate before heading home. Tomorrow he would need to go into town to buy pokeballs and other supplies to go catch his first pokemon. He could stop by the Trainer's Outpost and buy a pokemon, but that didn't feel right to him.

A trainer's starter was special. People talked about them as if they were sacred, and in a way they were. A starter was your first companion, your first teammate. Trainers always said that losing your starter hurt worse than any other pokemon. There was a belief - backed up by numerous stories - that trainers who released or traded their starters would suddenly have incredibly bad luck. A starter was special, and Daniel wasn't going to treat his any less.

To his surprise, his parents were waiting for him when he returned home. They typically went to bed on the earlier side and he was getting home late after a night of volleyball. They called him into the living room where they were watching reality television.

"Dan," his father started after he muted the television, "are you sure this is what you want?" His voice had sounded resigned.

"Yes, I am," Daniel didn't let his voice waiver despite the lump in his throat.

"You could still go to college. Your scores are good enough that you could get in even after two years."

"No Dad. This is what I want. I want to be a trainer and challenge the League."

There was an extended moment of silence before his dad let out a heavy sign and stood up. He left the room and returned a minute later with a cardboard box. He handed the box to Daniel before returning to his seat. "Even if we don't think this is the best option, your mother and I aren't going to let you go unprepared."

Daniel opened the box as his father continued, "There is a luxury ball for your starter as well as a dozen poke balls to get you started. We got a few storage capsules already and tomorrow you and I can go get all the camping and traveling gear you need."

"Dad, Mom, thank you." There was no hiding the shakiness in his voice this time. Verbal support and well wishes he expected, but not this. He had saved up money from smaller jobs and different volleyball tournaments for years in order to finance the start of his journey. Now, all of that was being provided. "Thank you so much. I-I know you guys aren't thrilled but-"

His mother "ohh'd" as she pulled him into a hug, which hid the fact that he wasn't able to finish speaking. Thankfully his parents understood his gratitude despite the words going unspoken.

The next day Daniel and his father went to the trainer outpost to shop. Having already been given balls and storage containers, Daniel skipped that section of the store and moved onto things needed for camping. They got a tent rated for every season with a rain and wind tarp. Along with the tent, they got a sleeping bag and mat. They also picked up a couple tools like a hatchet, rope, fishing rod, and hunting knife. Daniel also used his own money to pick up a hunting bow with about three dozen collapsible arrows and a sturdy, hickory walking stick.

Next they moved on to get clothes, picking up multiple outfits that were durable enough for extensive travel and harsh elements. With that they picked up about two months worth of preservable food for traveling. Daniel's dad made sure he got plenty of potions and repels as well as some other medicine for emergency use. Finally, they picked up a couple bags of generic pokemon kibble that would be good for whatever pokemon Daniel caught until a more custom diet was figured out.

"You don't want to look at the pokemon they have, do you, son?" his father asked as they were checking out.

"No. My starter deserves more respect than that."

His dad chuckled and patted him on the back proudly. "Thanks, Dad. Really."

* * *

His first foray into the wild was rather unsuccessful. Pokemon were scarce amidst the constant snow, though it was summer which meant only the occasional flurries. The pokemon he did see traces of were either not ones he wanted to catch - rattata, hoothoot, or snom - or were much stronger than he was capable of catching just by himself - snover. He went out during the day though to avoid sneasel. The dark-ice type were known for being vicious and almost impossible for rookie trainers to handle.

Daniel knew that there were migrating colonies of machop and meditite that passed through this far north. Swinub and piloswine roamed the foothills of the mountains to the north. Cubchoo and teddiursa, along with their much more dangerous parents, lived in the wooded areas along with deerling. Any of those would have been a wonderful starter, though he never saw any on his first trip out to the open route.

The trend continued for the next few days venturing out onto Route 217. Daniel avoided going out during night to avoid sneasel and he kept away from the forest to avoid mother bears and tried his luck on the open route. He never saw anything warranting his attention outside of a vanillite which promptly floated away before he could react. The only upside, was he was getting better with a bow as he would practice on any smaller pokemon he saw. After the second day, he stopped bringing lunch with him so he could get used to hunting for food.

The following week, he decided to go north of Snowpoint to the foothills to search for swinub instead. The pigs were plentiful, but they were always under the watchful eye of older piloswine. Daniel never got close enough for the piloswine to become defensive, but he did get a couple warning snorts.

He ventured into a small cave one day intent on finding an aron or snorunt, but he was swarmed by bats before he fled.

The week after he tried the forests surrounding Route 217, willing to risk bears for a chance at a deerling or a lost cub. He did find some hoofprints, but lost the trail at a large river running through the forest. He came across numerous bug pokemon, none of which interested him at all.

At the end of the third week, he was starting to get frustrated. The Snowpoint summer was nearly half gone. That meant machop and meditite would be gone soon as they couldn't take the harsh winter. It meant less daylight to venture out of the city.

"I'm going to the lake tomorrow," he announced to his parents over the dinner table. The sound of chewing and silverware clinking against plates stopped.

"Is that wise?" his mother asked.

It was a valid question. Lake Acuity was considered sacred to the Church of Uxie as it was the final known resting place of Uxie. As such, there was a constant, though small, stream of tourists and clergymen who visited the lake each day over the summer and stricter regulations enforced by rangers. Because it was sacred, trainer battles were not allowed to occur within a quarter mile of the lake to keep the peace. In addition, trainers were discouraged from catching pokemon at the lake. The rangers didn't really enforce that outside of trainers causing a lot of chaos in trying to catch a pokemon.

"No," Daniel admitted reluctantly. "But I only have a month of summer left and haven't been able to get close to anything. If I start now, then maybe I can gain the trust of a spheal or piplup in a couple weeks without ever putting myself in danger."

His idea was relatively simple and safe. By spending time near a group of peaceful seal or penguin pokemon, there was a chance Daniel could befriend one to raise as his starter. Empoleon and walrein were both known for their bulk, though they lacked speed. Befriending a wild pokemon would cause a lot less commotion and allow him to fly under the rangers' radar.

As an added bonus, the lake could draw out some pokemon he had been hunting for the past few weeks with little success. So as long as he could hang out in a relatively uncrowded area of the lake, then he might be able to catch something with little trouble.

His parents didn't have much of an argument and with a more vigilant ranger force watching over the lake, it was safer than what Daniel had been doing. So, he set out the next morning just before sunrise to make the hour long trek to the lakefront.

He arrived long before any tourists, though there were a couple rangers milling around the outpost between the route and the lakefront. They nodded at him but let him pass without question. The lake itself was pristine. It would be small enough to see the other side if it weren't for the island that sat in the middle. It was the last known resting place of Uxie, and the only spot that was actually off limits. The water glittered in the early morning sun and he heard pidove and starly chirping from the trees.

Across the lake, Daniel saw a large group of spheal and piplup playing on the shore under the supervision of a handful of their evolved forms. Luckily, he didn't see any empoleon or walrein though, which might have ruined his plans. Prinplup and sealeo were close enough to their playful previous evolution to still let people around as opposed to the final forms. Plan in place, Daniel started making his way towards the group, snow crunching with each step.

About halfway to the group, four or five mounds of snow pushed up in front of him traveling towards a snowdrift a couple yards away. Right before reaching the mound of snow, multiple pokemon, looking like balls of ice, jumped out of the ground and dove into the drift. One poked its icy head from the snow and looked at him.

The small shrew had dark blue eyes in contrast to its almost crystalline shell. It was a sandshrew. The ice-type variant was originally discovered in Alola and was colloquially referred to as Alolan sandshrew, though they were naturally found in any snowy area.

The sandshrew grunted at him and slid out of the snowdrift to Daniel's feet. It came up to about his knee, though it looked hunched over even when standing. It sniffed at his shoes before trying to take a bite of one. Daniel took a step back. Startled, the little pokemon jumped and chirped at him rapidly. "Well you're a feisty one, aren't ya?" he chuckled as he knelt down to get closer to the sandshrew. It blew a couple snowflakes at him in response.

Sandshrew, and their evolution, were incredibly weak to both fighting and fire type attacks, which were common in league matches. They also had a great typing against the top tier dragons, fairies, and psychics. They were rare at this elevation, preferring to live at the tops of mountains, which is why Daniel never considered one as an option.

"Do you want to come with me, little guy?" The pokemon didn't understand him and instead lightly headbutted his knee. The sandshrew's head was freezing cold, even through his clothes, and hard as a rock. Daniel winced slightly but didn't move from his position. Slowly, he pulled out a couple pieces of kibble from his breast pocket and held them out for the shrew. It sniffed at the food before picking one up between its stubby hands and eating.

When it finished the first piece of kibble, it promptly ate the other few pieces before trying to stick its snout in the pocket Daniel had procured the food from. Daniel laughed and pushed the sandshrew away, surprised at how heavy the shrew was. "If you want more, you have to come with me," he pulled the luxury ball of the bandolier and held it in front of the pokemon.

Pokemon were, in general, smart. Trained pokemon were smarter due to the technology implemented into the pokeball to help push down base instincts and provided a starting point for understanding human language. Wild pokemon, however, seemed to have a distinct knowledge and understanding of what a pokeball meant, even if it had never seen a human before. It was an odd phenomenon that researchers had been trying to figure out for about a decade, though nothing conclusive had been discovered.

So when Daniel held out the pokeball, the sandshrew knew, at a base level, what Daniel was asking for. He pulled out a couple more pieces of kibble as a bribe, though he kept the food between him and the ball. The sandshrew looked between the ball, the food, and Daniel multiple times, clearly thinking the decision over.

The sandshrew tried to duck under the luxury ball to get to the food but Daniel pulled the food to his chest. It then knocked the ball out of his hand to get to the kibble but he grabbed the ball and stood up to keep the determined shrew from the food. The pokemon glared at him before blasting him with a gust of freezing snow. When that didn't work, it headbutted him hard in the shin, bringing him to one knee. It immediately tackled him trying to get at the food.

Daniel dropped the luxury ball and pushed against the heavy shrew, managing to get out from under it after a few moments. He grabbed the ball again and held it between him and the sandshrew. "No!" he told it, "No more food unless you come with me." His shin throbbed from being headbutt by an ice covered steel ball, but he kept the pain from showing.

The sandshrew looked him in the eye for a minute. Then two. Daniel's eyes were burning from not blinking. When he thought he wouldn't be able to go any longer, the sandshrew blinked and looked down. With a victorious smile, Daniel pressed the luxury ball against the sandshrew. It was sucked into the ball in a flash of red light. The indicator light blinked red a couple times before it flashed blue and went out.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, pumping a fist in celebration.

"Caught yerself a shrew, huh?" A voice spoke from behind him. Daniel jumped up in shock, whipping around to see one of the rangers from the outpost watching him. He glanced around and didn't see anyone else nearby.

"Uh, yes. Yes sir, Ranger-" Daniel trailed off, not knowing the man's name.

"Brian Smith," the ranger answered. He kept talking without giving Daniel a chance to properly address him, "Ya know yer not supposed to be catching 'mons out here, right?"

"Err, yes sir. I was-"

"You know I can legally have a suspension placed on your license for doing so, right?" The ranger's accent faded slightly and he took on a more serious tone.

Daniel felt the blood rush from his face. "Yes sir, I did. I didn't disturb anyone though. And I didn't technically battle the sandshrew. He allowed me to catch him."

Ranger Smith glared sternly at him for a moment or two before cracking a grin. "Yer right. I knew you were planning ta catch something the moment I saw ya. Just wanted to scare ya a bit."

He heaved a sigh of relief. "Wait. You knew?"

"'Course I did! Rangers are informed whenever a new class of rooks are released. We've had a couple reports from other outposts about your pickiness. I kinda expected you to show up a week ago."

He almost let himself get frustrated over the comment but he took a breath and calmed himself. It made sense that the League had local rangers watching out for rookie trainers, especially those who decided to catch their starter on their own.

"If you knew what I was doing, then why did you let me catch the sandshrew? Why did you follow me?"

"I saw ya heading to the group over there and wanted to make sure you didn't cause a ruckus. Lotsa rooks think they can snatch a young piplup or spheal and scram, but it never works out and they get hurt."

"Err, well. I was hoping to catch one but I was hoping to befriend one the next couple days to keep things calm."

The ranger gave a loud laugh and a nod of acknowledgement. "Glad yer smarter than yer friends. That's the way to do it if you want to keep from battlin'. Anyways, the shrew's a nice catch. Don't typically see 'em this far down. Consider yerself lucky. And don't go making trouble, Pugh."

"Yes sir. Thank you Ranger Smith," Daniel called after him as the ranger turned to walk back to the outpost.

Once the ranger was out of earshot, Daniel fell to his knees, pants now a little wet from the snow. Two thoughts ran concurrently through his head. First was that he finally had a starter: a friendly, curious, determined little sandshrew. Second was that the walk home was definitely going to be painful if the throbbing in his leg was any indication.

* * *

**Trainer: Daniel Pugh** **  
**Alolan Sandshrew - (Not yet named)

**AN: So this is the first chapter. I've tried writing stories before and never finished. This is one that I hope breaks the mold. I don't honestly have any real direction for this story, but the characters popped into my head and suddenly a chapter was written, so I'm going with it. Note that I'm starting this story off rated T, though I expect it to ramp up later. I'm aiming for a realistic pokemon world, and taking a good bit of inspiration from "Sacrifice and Subjugation" by MetalDargon. Hope you enjoyed it! Leave a review if you did!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own pokemon. I'm also not going to remember to post a disclaimer in every chapter, so I'm counting this one as good for the whole story.**


	2. Drift

Chapter 2: Drift

It didn't take long for Daniel to get control of his emotions after Ranger Smith caught him catching the sandshrew. Once he did, he released his starter in front of him. The little ice shrew coalesced before him and immediately started chirping and grunting at him, holding out its little paws expectantly.

Daniel chuckled, but handed over several pieces of kibble. As the sandshrew began eating, Daniel reached out to touch its head. When he first moved, the sandshrew stopped eating to eye his hand wearily, but let him approach. Its shell was completely smooth aside from groves criss crossing across it, slightly wet, and freezing to the touch, almost like an icicle. Daniel stroked the icy exterior but the pokemon gave no response.

He moved his hand slowly towards the softer, furry belly of the shrew. Seeing this, the pokemon dropped the kibble and curled up, protecting its stomach. It wasn't completely curled into a ball; Daniel could probably wriggle a finger in to touch its belly, but the intent was clear. The sandshrew might have agreed to be his pokemon, but he hadn't gained its trust yet.

"Alright," he said, backing his hand away, "We're not there yet. One day." The shrew peaked up at him for a moment before straightening out and continued eating the kibble. Daniel stroked its head while it ate to try and get it used to contact, though he wasn't sure if it felt the touch. "We're gonna have to find a name for you soon though. I can't keep calling you 'it', now can I?" An ear twitched, but it didn't look up from the food.

While the pokeball technology was amazing, it wasn't a miracle worker. It would take a week or so before the sandshrew really started to understand him. In the meantime, talking to it and touching it would help acclimation to it's new lifestyle. "Well come on, little guy. Let's go hang out with the spheal and piplup. I came this far, might as well start getting to know the group."

So Daniel started off towards the group of seals and penguins, his first pokemon following behind in a funny, but oddly effective combination of rolling, sliding and walking. "We're going to become great," he said to the sandshrew as they walked. "I've always wanted to be a trainer. To challenge gyms, to explore the world. Maybe, we'll become champions one day. That feels like a stretch though, but I guess every champion starts as a rookie."

The sandshrew remained quiet.

Daniel finally stopped around twenty yards away from the group of piplup and spheal and settled down at the base of a large rock. Already little penguins were glancing over at him, though none were brave enough to approach. Daniel figured they were close enough to be interesting, but not so close to be a threat. The sandshrew glanced at the group and then looked back at Daniel before it curled up a couple feet away from him. While its eyes were closed, Daniel knew it wasn't sleeping based on how its ears would twitch at any sound.

Still, he took the time to pull out his pokedex and linked it to the luxury ball of his starter. After a moment of synching up, the sandshrew was officially registered as his first pokemon. The sandshrew was an eighty pound male and a little over two feet tall. It was about six months old. A few clicks later, he was looking into the updated database of sandshrew.

_Sandshrew, the Mouse Pokemon._

_Ground type sandshrew live in areas that get little rainfall. They curl up into a ball in order to protect their soft underbelly with their hard, scaly shell. Despite this hard shell, sandshrew are still considered mammals. They are pale yellow, with a whiter underbelly. Sandshrew evolve into sandslash at around a year old._

_Ground type sandshrew was the first discovered species of the pokemon, and was the only one known about for centuries. It wasn't until a volcanic eruption on Akala Island in Alola that the commonly known Alolan-sandshrew was discovered, as the eruption forced many sandshrew and its evolved form sandslash scurrying down the mountain to safety._

_Alolan-sandshrew are ice and steel type pokemon that have a much harder, thicker shell than their desert cousins. Due to the rigidity of their shell, Alolan-sandshrew cannot completely curl up into a ball, though they still instinctively curl up in defense. Ice type sandshrew primarily live at the top of mountains, though have been sighted in regions of constant snow._

_These shrews have an igloo-like exterior that is a pale blue with yellowing fur covering their belly. It is unknown how the ice type sandshrew evolve into sandslash. There have been ten recorded trainers since the pokemon was discovered who managed to evolve it. Only two living trainers currently have an Alolan-sandslash: Andri Berg Snowpoint City Gym Leader in Sinnoh and Arthur Bishop the 3rd Elite of Alola._

_Both types of sandshrew are primarily carnivorous, preferring to eat insects over anything. They have been recorded to eat berries and nuts when no other food could be found._

_Sandshrew are cared for by their mother for the first couple months of their lives before being left to fend for themselves. Typically, the group of baby sandshrew will stay together for the next couple months before branching out and living alone, where they aggressively defend their territory against other sandshrew._

Daniel stopped reading as the information moved on to breeding habits. Kibble would work for now, but he would need to buy a more specific formula for his starter. He would also need to start looking into how to evolve the pokemon. Talking to the gym leader might help, though trainers were notoriously secretive about evolution techniques. Still, it wouldn't hurt to try and it was better to start looking sooner rather than later.

Glancing at the time, he decided it was time to head home. None of the piplup had dared venture over to him, but they weren't startled when stood up. His sandshrew wasn't either, hopping up almost immediately after Daniel moved.

There were significantly more people along the banks of the lake near the ranger outpost when Daniel made it around the lake. Tourists were snapping pictures with Uxie's island in the background and a group of priests were praying on mats a short distance from the water.

The few rangers milling about outside the outpost waved at him, calling out congratulations. Ranger Smith obviously had told them about catching the sandshrew that was sliding along behind him. The ranger in question stuck his head out of the outpost at the commotion. He gave him a wave before heading back inside.

The walk back to Snowpoint from the lake took nearly an hour longer than the walk to the lake due to his hurting leg and the sandshrew. The pokemon walked slower than Daniel in general, but it also would stop to play often. Almost every large snowdrift they passed, the little shrew would pounce into creating a large cloud of snow. It would then have to dig itself out, chortling the whole time.

Anytime a pokemon crossed their paths, the sandshrew would put on a surprising burst of speed, chasing after the pokemon. He would tackle the pokemon, then let it go. He would then race back to Daniel, sliding to his feet and chirping proudly at his trainer. Once it found a snom, which he promptly ate.

"Sorry bud," Daniel said to his starter as they walked up to a large, stone sign that read 'WELCOME to SNOWPOINT CITY'. "You have to go back into the ball." His starter's curious look turned to a glare when Daniel pointed his ball at him and returned the pokemon.

Trainer's weren't allowed to keep pokemon out of their pokeballs while inside city limits until they had four badges. The idea was to give trainers time to establish discipline in their teams. It kept civilians safe and kept the peace inside cities. There were exceptions to the rule such as designated battle plots, private homes, and pokemon centers.

The pokemon center was Daniel's first stop in the city. Pokemon centers were required to all have the same exterior so they were easily picked out by visiting trainers. Most larger cities had multiple centers, the Snowpoint only had one due to its remote location. Pokemon centers were painted white with a bright red roof and pokeball symbol above the doors.

The center had at least thirty trainers inside that Daniel could see. Due to the harsh winter, most trainers challenged Snowpoint during the short summer season. So it wasn't too surprising to see so many trainers in the center with it being the middle of summer. He was mostly ignored as he dropped off his pokemon, even the nurse taking little notice of him. It wasn't until he was walking out to go to the trainer outpost while his pokemon was being looked at that someone acknowledged him.

"Hey you!" Daniel turned to find a tall, tanned guy moving to catch up with him. He looked to be maybe a year or two older than him. When he caught up to Daniel, the guy continued, "Haven't seen you around before. What's your name?"

"Daniel. What's-"

"Danny. I like it. I'm Cal. So Danny, how many badges do you have?"

Daniel twitched slightly at the nickname, but let it drop. The guy was walking with him, not paying any attention to where they were going. "I don't have any badges. I jus-"

Cal cut him off again, " No badges and you braved the trip up to Snowpoint? Heatran's ass that takes some balls. Props kid. Where ya from?"

"I'm actually from here. Just finished up the survival course like a month ago."

His companion was quiet for a moment before he chuckled. "Well, I guess that's on me for assuming. So Danny, what'd ya get for a starter? Saw ya dropping something off at the center."

Daniel grinned a bit, "A sandshrew. I came across a group of them today and caught one."

"Sandshrew, huh? Gonna be rough going against an ice type gym - wait. You mean the ice type shrew, right?" At Daniel's nod, he continued, "Oh that's cool! Haven't come across one of those before."

The pair entered the outpost and Daniel began looking through the various foods. "How many badges do you have, Cal?"

"Hm? Oh, me?" Cal looked up from a pair of snowshoes that he had picked up at the door, "I have six. Snowpoint is seventh then down to Eterna. Was kinda planning on hitting Snowpoint last, but took a trip to Iron Island after Canalave, lost track of time, and decided to come up here during the summer instead of sitting on seven badges for a year."

Daniel nodded as he decided on the formula of insect-based food. It would hopefully only be a supplement to the sandshrew foraging, as it was more expensive than the generic kibble. "So when are you battling Leader Berg?"

"Don't really know, honestly. I like to spend some time in the area before battling. Go at my own pace. Speaking of, are you planning on bailing soon or are you staying for your first badge?"

"Yeah. Leader Berg has a sandslash, so I want to get some tips from him, maybe find out how to evolve my starter. But it'll be a while. I need two pokemon to challenge and I only just caught my starter."

The pair checked out, Daniel getting the food and Cal getting a couple ice picks and a pair the pair of snowshoes he found. "So the rest of your class, they already get the badge or did they split?"

"Not sure," Daniel responded, "None of us were really close. I know they were all planning on leaving, but I don't know if they have or not." The older guy nodded but remained quiet as they made their way back to the pokemon center. Along the way, they both got notifications on their pokedex that their pokemon were ready to be picked up.

Once back at the center, they picked up their pokemon, Daniel his one, and Cal his team of eight. As he went to wish Cal a good evening, the man spoke up again, "So Danny, what d'ya say to coming camping with me for a couple weeks?"

"Uh, what?"

"You're new to this whole thing, right? The survival class is good and all, but it doesn't really cut it compared to the real thing. So let me show you the ropes. We'll try to get you your second 'mon. I like to take my time anyways, so I was already planning on taking a trip to the mountains."

"Yeah, sounds good! But, why would you want to help me?"

Cal shrugged. "I got screwed by some hotshot when I was a new trainer. I felt like shit for weeks. Told myself I wouldn't be like that, ya know? World's a dangerous place, so we should be helping each other, not crushing dreams. It's what Arceus would want, at least, to have everyone helping each other out."

"That's - yeah. Yeah, I'd love to come. Thanks Cal," Daniel said.

His new companion cheered up almost immediately at that. "Cool! So how 'bout this? You take the week. Get your starter listening to you, talk to Berg, and whatever the hell you want to do. Then we'll head out, and plan to get back before summer ends."

"Works for me. I'll be ready!"

"Sweet! Alright, I'll catch ya later Danny. Gonna see if I can catch any live battles at the gym." They quickly exchanged contact information before going their separate ways. As Cal headed to the gym, Daniel began his long walk home.

His parents were both excited and surprised to find that he had his starter after only one day at the lake. Daniel thought it was mostly due to the fact that he hadn't gotten in trouble and wouldn't be risking it anymore. Due to the sharp nails on the shrew's paws, his mother forbade the pokemon from being inside. "We paid a lot of money for those hardwood floors; I won't have them ruined," she had said.

They were also pleased that his first true stint away from home would be with someone more experienced to help him get used to being in the wild. It was refreshing for him that his parents were becoming more accepting and supportive of his dream. Even if he only just caught his starter, they had talked through his ideas for catching a pokemon and were noticing the work he put into being a trainer.

* * *

As it turned out, setting up a meeting with Andri Berg, the leader of Snowpoint city gym, was significantly harder than Daniel expected. He couldn't schedule a meeting over the phone. When he went into the gym, the receptionist turned him away, stating that the leader wouldn't have time for a meeting if he wasn't battling. So Daniel left town and explored the forest to the south with his starter, trying to acclimate it to different environments and to his presence. He tried again the next day to find a different receptionist. She told him to try again the next day around 1 in the afternoon as Leader Berg kept that time open for other duties aside from battling.

So Daniel went out onto Route 217 to explore with his pokemon. They passed a few trainers who were straggling into the city after a long journey north. His starter wasn't antagonistic towards the passing trainers, though he did draw close to Daniel whenever one would pass.

Like when Daniel first caught the pokemon, it constantly jumped into snowdrifts and would chase down wild pokemon, eating any bugs that they came across. He was starting to listen more to Daniel though. He would come back to Daniel whenever he would call. The pokemon paid attention when Daniel would tell him to chase down a pokemon he hadn't seen. It was clear that the pokeball was doing its job.

It was when the sandshrew went sliding out of control after jumping into another snowdrift that Daniel finally decided on a name for the rambunctious little pokemon. "I don't understand how you managed to slide on top of snow as heavy as you are," he said to him, "But you certainly enjoy sliding around and jumping into snowdrifts, so that's what I'm going to name you: Drift."

The newly dubbed Drift looked at him for a moment before grunting and blowing snowflakes at him. Daniel took it as acceptance of the name and spent the rest of the day using the name to help the pokemon get used to it.

The next day, three days after catching his starter, Daniel entered the gym intent on talking to the leader. "My name is Daniel Pugh. I'd like to talk to Leader Berg please," he stated to the receptionist, unfortunately, the same receptionist that sent him packing the first day. She didn't recognize him, luckily, but still scoffed at him dismissively. "Ma'am, I was told that Leader Berg doesn't hold battles today at this time. Please at least ask if he'll see me. I want to get some tips on how to raise my starter"

That got him a glare in response, but she did pick up the phone and hit a few buttons. After a couple seconds, Daniel heard a warbled voice come from the other line, though he couldn't distinguish any words.

"Yes, there's a Daniel Pugh here to see you… No, he does not have an appointment… He said he has some questions about his starter… Yes, I know all of the graduates used that same excuse to try and get a starter from you… I'll ask to make sure," she pulled the phone away from her mouth and addressed him, "What do you have as a starter?"

"I have an ice type sandshrew."

"He says he has an Alolan sandshrew… Are you sure?... Yes sir, I'll send him to training room four," she hung up the phone and looked at him. "For your sake, I hope you're not lying. He'll meet you in training room four. It's on level B-one, second door on the right."

Daniel thanked her and hurried to the stairs. He went down one floor and made his way to the training room. He only had to wait for a couple minutes before the gym leader arrived. Andri Berg was an unassuming man in his early fifties. He had short, salt and pepper hair and icy blue eyes.

"So, Mr. Pugh, you managed to catch a sandshrew as your starter?" The leader's tone held no hint of amusement. Daniel was sure that if he had lied to get this far, then he would likely be in a world of trouble with the gym leader.

"Yes sir," he said, swallowing any nerves. "I caught him a few days ago at Lake Acuity."

"May I see him?"

Daniel nodded and released his starter. Immediately, Leader Berg's eyes softened slightly and he knelt down to inspect the pokemon, who looked slightly startled, though he didn't move away. "I'm glad you weren't lying about this. Ice type sandshrew are incredible pokemon as are their evolutions," he paused for a moment before asking, "Hm, did you happen to find him in a group?"

"Yes sir. There were four or five of them. All of them fled before I even knew what they were. This one stayed back and I convinced him to join me."

The leader nodded as he looked over the icy shell of the sandshrew. He clicked his fingernails in certain areas, seemingly feeling for something, though Daniel wasn't sure what. He then moved to feel the sandshrews furry belly, but the pokemon curled in on itself. The leader just chuckled and tickled the shrews exposed ear. The pokemon shivered before opening up, which Daniel had never gotten the pokemon to do. "I can definitely tell he's a new pokemon. I would guess that he probably was ready to go off on his own when you found him. Quite lucky really. What's his name?"

"It's Drift."

Leader Berg nodded and tested the name out. The little shrew blew a couple snowflakes in his face in response, causing the man to laugh. "You're a friendly little guy. So, Daniel - may I call you Daniel?" At his nod the leader continued, "What can I help you with?"

"Well, there's almost no information on ice type sandshrew, so I don't really know what I need to be focusing on."

"I'm not surprised you struggled to find anything. Trainers like their secrets and scientists don't enjoy climbing mountains. Most trainers don't want to either for that matter." He was quiet for a minute as he gently stroked the sandshrews soft fur.

"Sandshrew are weak pokemon. You're going to feel like you need to focus solely on developing its attacking prowess and defensive capabilities for it to keep up. Don't. When they evolve, they get significantly stronger but also lose a lot of flexibility, something that is quite common among steel types if Leader David is to be believed.

"That being said, you need to focus on building his mobility and speed. Sprints, obstacle courses, stretches, that kind of thing. Obviously he needs to be well rounded, but it becomes much harder to build that flexibility once he evolves. So that should be your primary focus."

"So how do you evolve a sandshrew?" Daniel knew it was a shot in the dark, but he had to at least try.

Sure enough, the leader gave a deep, rolling laugh and mimed wiping away a tear. "That's a good one Daniel. You know, most high level trainers and gym leaders see evolution as a mark of a good trainer. So I would encourage you to figure out how to evolve your pokemon yourself. You'll both be better for it, and Uxie would be proud of your pursuit. Anything else you want to know?"

Daniel nodded at the advice, glad that Berg didn't get upset over the question. "Yeah, what about food? I got an insect based feed that was high in zinc, but I don't really know what I need to get."

"That's fine for now. When you run out of that, you'll want to get something with high vitamin c and magnesium. You might have to custom order it. It'll help with his energy levels and mobility. Anything else?" Daniel shook his head. "Well, I'm afraid I must be off then. If you decide to stay in Snowpoint until summer ends, I'll be much more available to discuss things then. Otherwise, I would say you have a good starting point. Good luck Daniel, and it was nice to meet you, Drift." The leader scratched the sandshrew's belly once more before leaving the room.

As most of the day had passed, Daniel decided to spend what was left at the gym. He found Cal watching preliminary battles in the arena and took a seat next to him. Aside from initial greetings, the pair were mostly silent as Cal was focused on the battles and Daniel was trying to figure out what Cal was watching for.

After the third preliminary battle, Leader Berg took the stage and battled a challenger. The trainer was battling for his fifth badge, but Cal leaned in as if Berg's championship team was being challenged. The challenger started off with a graveler against Berg's beartic.

The battle raged between the two contestants. It was pretty even, with both trainers losing a couple pokemon. They were both on their third pokemon when tides shifted and Berg began to gain the upper hand with his sneasel over the challenger's haunter. The challenger ordered his ghost to use destiny bond. The sneasel was in the middle of an attack and couldn't stop. The haunter took the hit and both pokemon fell unconscious.

The challenger sent out a lucario while Berg released a massive mamoswine. The leader's face was cold and emotionless. The way he ordered his pokemon subtly changed, losing the hint of thrill for battle and becoming more robotic and efficient. His mamoswine battled in much the same way, no move wasted and attacking with incredible power. The mamoswine beat the lucario quickly, only taking a couple hits, before bringing down the challenger's charizard with a single rock slide.

Cal leaned back in his seat with a grin on his face. "That was a fun match."

Daniel wordlessly agreed and asked, "What were you looking for? It wasn't like you were just watching for fun. You've been searching for something in every battle."

His friend chuckled but nodded at him. "Attentive, that'll help you later. I'm not going to just give you the answer but I'll help you out since you're new. Every gym leader embodies some principle that is supposed to help you grow as a trainer and as a person. Gym challenges aren't just to show the power of our pokemon, but to show how we've grown as a team and as a trainer.

"I've always found it helpful to learn what gym leaders value before going into the battle. Not to cheat the system or anything but to look at who I am as a trainer and try to better myself. And I think I just figured out what Berg values."

A new challenger took his place on the opposite end of the arena, and a second gym badge battle began. "So what happened that clued you in?" Daniel asked. It wasn't the same as asking for the answer, but it would give him more direction.

"You saw how Berg's vibe shifted after the destiny bond? That's what finally made it click. But I've been watching battles for three days now, so take some time to watch."

Daniel nodded and leaned back in his seat to watch the battle before him. He was still unsure of what to watch for, but he still focused in, intent on learning.

* * *

**Trainer: Daniel Pugh  
** Alolan Sandshrew - Drift

**AN: Here's the second chapter, hope you enjoyed it. Slower pace, but will start getting more pokemon involvement next chapter. I said in the last AN that I didn't really have a plan for this story, and that has already been made apparent to me in this chapter as Cal honestly just appeared out of nowhere. Literally was not planning on Daniel talking to any other trainers until the gym leader. Please review! I'd love to hear any feedback.**


	3. A Walk in the Woods

Chapter 3: A Walk in the Woods

The days leading up to Daniel and Cal's departure passed quickly. Most mornings were spent exploring the wilds around Snowpoint with Drift. By the end of the week, the sandshrew had a good understanding of the English language and was responding to Daniel consistently. They had yet to battle any trainers, but they had battled a few wild pokemon, the most notable was a small snover that ventured out of the mountains. It was a close battle, but Drift managed to pull through.

Daniel also set aside an hour every morning to work with his sandshrew on mobility drills, mostly setting up obstacle courses constructed from firewood in his backyard. Drift wasn't as thrilled with these as he was battling, and he tended to knock over obstacles more often than he successfully cleared them.

In the afternoons, after Drift had eaten multiple bugs in the wild, Daniel would go to the gym and watch battles, oftentimes Cal joining him. He still wasn't sure what Andri Berg 'valued' as Cal put it, but he felt like he was learning a lot about battling through watching. Leader Berg was a fairly straightforward battler, staying away from tricks and gimmicks. Most of his challengers seemed to respect that and battled in kind. The few that tried to pull something on the Leader were put down quickly, much like the first challenger Daniel watched.

"Danny! You ready man?" Cal called out as Daniel walked up to the trainer outpost, where they had decided to meet. Daniel was excited, but Cal seemed to just have a level of enthusiasm that Daniel could never match. They stocked up on potions, pokeballs and other items they would need for an extended period of time out in the wild. Afterwards, they made their way to the northern exit of the city.

Once they were about a mile outside of Snowpoint, Cal stopped them. "Alright, we're far enough out, let's let out our teams. Start us off, Danny; it's probably better to introduce my team one at a time afterwards."

Drift appeared and a flash of red light before Daniel. The sandshrew looked curiously at Cal, but didn't get scared. "Drift, this is Cal," Daniel spoke up, "We're going to be traveling with him and his team for the next several weeks. He's about to release his team, so don't get scared, okay?" Drift grunted and moved to stand closer to Daniel's legs. Daniel held back a snort at the little sandshrew's timidity; at least he wasn't curled up into a ball.

Cal watched the interaction with a grin. "Nice to meet you, Drift. I'm gonna release my team one at a time. This is Sozin, my starter." He released a large, red pokemon behind him. Immediately, the air got warmer and the snow around the pokemon melted. The magmortar loomed over Cal, and raised a clawed, cannon-like hand in greeting.

"Bruno," he released a machamp. The four-armed muscled pokemon slammed its lower pair of firsts together.

"Delta." A staraptor with a large red plume of feathers gave a screech, before acting like it wasn't interested in Daniel or Drift. Cal just chuckled, "She acts all haughty, but she's never let me down."

"Next is April." A bouncing blue rabbit appeared. The azumarill bounced over to him and Drift hugged them both before hopping back to her trainer.

"Magneto, yeah I know, it's really original, but he actually gave a response when I suggested that as opposed to every other name I gave. He's technically genderless, but I always refer to him as a he." A magneton coalesced, floating emotionlessly beside its trainer.

"This is Snapper," he released a krokorok. The bipedal crocodile lived up to its name and clapped its jaws a couple times. "These are who I typically use in battles. 'Course the league lets trainers keep eight 'mons on hand after they have 6 badges, so I have a dartrix and a rhyhorn that I've been working with for the past couple months. So here are Nyra and Rook."

Cal released the aforementioned pokemon. The green owl gave Daniel and Drift a cursory glance before tucking her head under her wing. The rhyhorn gave a snort and pawed the snow beneath it but did nothing else. "Alright guys, this is Daniel and his starter Drift. He's a new trainer, so we're gonna show him the ropes a bit for the next couple weeks," Cal paused to let that sink in for everyone before continuing, "So, Delta found us a nice clearing at the foot of some mountains that we can set up base camp. It'll take us a couple days at least to get up there so we'll focus on traveling instead of training, but that's the plan for now. Everyone ready?" There was a cacophony of approving noises. Cal returned all his pokemon except for the bubbly azumarill and they set off.

"So why'd you decide to become a trainer?" It was mildly amusing that they had been spending some time with one another for a week, but Cal's question was still the first time either had expressed any interest in each other's inspirations.

"It goes deeper than this, but I think the main reason was that I want to explore."

"Could've been a field tech, though right? Wouldn't that line up with your church doctrine?"

"You know, my dad said the same thing almost verbatim," the two shared a laugh before Daniel continued, "As I said, it's more than just exploring. I want to compete too. And the thought of being told where I have to go doesn't thrill me. Being a field assistant isn't off the table, but it's not for me right now."

Cal was quiet for a minute before saying, "I'm glad that you have a back up." There was another pregnant pause as they walked through the snow. "Anyone can win the first two badges. If you can't, you don't deserve to be a trainer. To get the third and fourth is harder, but not much. The fifth badge is the biggest pinch point, as battles start to get a lot harder. It takes grit, skill, and honestly, some luck.

"I'm not saying that you can't do it, but it's hard and you really have to want it while also having the skill to back it up. 'Wanting to compete,'" Cal gave some finger quotes, "isn't good enough. There has to be more, something deeper."

"You only have six badges. How do you know you have what it takes?" Daniel heard the defensiveness in his tone, even though he knew his companion was right.

Cal snorted. "The short answer is that my full name is Cathal Sullivan."

Sullivan. That was a heavy name. The Sullivan's were an Elite dynasty in Sinnoh. For the nearly four hundred years, there had always been a Sullivan in the Elite Four. They owned a breeding range for fire type pokemon on Stark Island. As such, they almost always specialized in fire type pokemon.

"Wait, aren't you supposed to be a fire type trainer then?"

The older trainer gave a long and heavy sigh before answering, "That takes me to the long version of why I know I can make it. That hotshot trainer that snubbed me is my cousin, Devin Sullivan. I had Sozin for all of a couple hours and Devin showed up fresh off of beating the first Elite. Sozin wasn't obeying me, like any new pokemon, and Devin made this huge deal over me not being able to make it as a trainer or a Sullivan. As immature as it was, that hurt. Devin was my hero as a kid, and him telling me I wasn't good enough almost destroyed me. I finally got over it months later and pretty much had to completely re-catch Sozin. But since that day, I vowed that I would make it. But the idea of specializing in fire type pokemon was soured for me after Devin was a dick. Sozin will be the only fire type I train.

"I know I can make it because I have invested every fiber of my being into being a trainer. Into my team. Into this pursuit. And when I get there, I will be challenging Devin and I will be beating him into the dirt like the scum that he is." There was a fire and a passion to Cal's voice. It was intimidating, magnetic, and convincing.

"I believe you," Daniel responded after a few moments, his voice heavy with emotion. "What're you going to do after you beat him? Revenge seems kinda hollow."

"Yeah it is. And I'm not really sure. I know that I love my team. For now, that feels like enough. It'll take a while anyways. Devin has nearly a decade of training on me. He's about to take over for our grandfather as the Second Elite." The mood grew somber, only to be interrupted by April's happy squeaking.

"So first lesson," Cal began later that afternoon. They had spent the day traveling, their conversation much shallower than when they first started. They saw a couple pokemon while walking, though most of them avoided the open path they were on. The pair didn't stop for the ones they did see aside from the few bugs which Drift caught for food. "Where do we set up camp for the night?"

Daniel looked around. They were in the wilderness north of Snowpoint. Despite not being on a defined route, the path they were on was very spacious, nearly a quarter mile across. "We need some shelter from the elements. So I would say off this path, just inside the treeline."

"And he passes the first test!" Cal cheered. The pair, along with their pokemon turned to the northwest and made their way to the forest. It took them another half hour or so to reach the trees, and the sun was starting to set. "Second test, what's the first thing we do in setting up a camp?"

"Set a perimeter and set up our tents."

"Swing and a miss. This is where the survival class starts to fall a bit short. We need to scout the area. Make sure there's no wild pokemon in the immediate area and make sure that we aren't in an area where pokemon are super likely to come across us during the night. Once we're confident that this is a good spot, then we'll set our camp up."

Cal showed him different things to look for like broken limbs, water sources, and trails. Afterwards, they set up their tents under a tall pine tree. Cal released his team and they all set off doing different tasks. "Once we get to the clearing, I'll make sure you get practice on the basics of setting camp and hunting and stuff, but it's getting late and we really should get some food," Cal said. His machamp and magmortar were working on getting firewood and a fire set up. The krokorok was showing the rhyhorn how to set up a rock perimeter. Nyra, the dartrix, flew up into a tree where it acted as a lookout.

"What about Magneto and Delta?" Daniel asked about the magneton and staraptor, who flew off deeper into the forest.

"Hunting. Delta finds the pokemon, Magneto will take them down at once with a discharge. We'll have to go out afterwards and bring it back."

Daniel nodded and knelt down next to Drift. The little shrew looked exhausted after spending the whole day traveling. "How ya doing bud?" Drift grunted and rolled over, offering his belly to Daniel. Daniel chuckled and pet the soft fur. Ever since meeting with Leader Berg, the sandshrew had been more affectionate and trusting with Daniel. Drift would often present his stomach to Daniel, requesting a belly rub, especially when he was tired. "You're going to have to start really working on those mobility drills." The truth was that Daniel was pretty tired himself after a full day of walking.

"Yeah you need to run some drills too, noob," Cal called out from the other side of their small camp. Daniel mimed getting shot in the heart, but knew that the more experienced trainer had a point. "That'll be something we work on once we get to base camp. Being a trainer isn't all about directing your team. In the wild, you're a team. You have to be just as strong and flexible as your pokemon are."

"What about the trainer academies and sponsored trainers?"

Around a decade ago, larger corporations in Sinnoh created trainer academies. These were schools trainers could attend following survival class and learn how to be a competitive battler. From these trainer schools, some trainers became sponsored by the corporation to compete in tournaments.

Daniel meant for it to be a sarcastic and rhetorical question, though Cal responded seriously, "They aren't real trainers. All spoiled pricks if you ask me."

"Not real trainers?"

"No! They're just some rich kids who want to play trainer. They don't train with their teams, they train their pokemon as tools. Hell, I doubt they even train most of their pokemon personally. I know they don't catch their own pokemon."

"And how do you know? Obviously you aren't sponsored."

"Stark Industries always tries to recruit my family and when they can't, they go after our friends. So I have a couple friends who are in an academy. Well, they used to be friends."

Daniel considered that as he stroked his pokemon's fur. Finally he said, "I mean I can't disagree, but that doesn't make them not trainers. I mean, they have to be somewhat successful or the corporations wouldn't bother sponsoring them."

"Ya know, I don't really think they make money off the results of the trainers," Cal responded hesitantly, "I think the trainers place just high enough in competitions and conferences to get exposure for the company. That brings in prospective trainers to the academy and current trainers want to buy the products. But sponsored trainers don't place high in the Lily of the Valley. They just can't keep up with trainers who have a bond with their team and pokemon who think for themselves in battle. They don't develop their own training habits and skills so they plateau."

Daniel nodded and let the conversation drop. They continued to set up camp until Delta and Magneto returned. He and Cal then went off with Bruno and Sozin, Cal's machamp and magmortar, to carry back a dozen furrets, which fed the pair and all the pokemon. The only members of Cal's team to not eat were Magneto and Rook, his rhyhorn. Daniel did have to give Drift some kibble to go with the cooked meat, as it wouldn't provide the nutrients the shrew needed.

The following day, they woke up early and traveled the whole day, only stopping for a quick meal at lunch. Cal spent the time traveling quizzing Daniel on different topics, providing explanations whenever Daniel didn't know something. The third day, they arrived at the clearing that Cal intended to use as their base camp. It was a large clearing about a mile into the forest and a mile from the foot of the mountains. On the far side of the clearing, a river poked out of the trees.

"Since we're staying here for a while, we want to be close to a body of water. It's still early, so we'll set up camp ourselves instead of my team doing the heavy lifting. Check out that side of the clearing, I'll check this side." Daniel nodded and moved along the right edge of the clearing, looking for signs of pokemon. Drift followed obediently behind him, occasionally blowing snowflakes at his trainer. To keep the sandshrew involved and to get him used to the process, Daniel had him check in the underbrush they passed just inside the treeline.

Once they had checked the area, they set up their tents before moving on to setting a perimeter. There, Cal had Rook raise rocks from the ground before having Daniel move the boulders to set the perimeter. It wouldn't stop a determined, aggressive pokemon, but it did provide the clear boundaries of the camp to curious pokemon, which was oftentimes enough to dissuade them from investigating.

"Alright, camp duties. You're in charge of chopping all the firewood," Cal said once the boundary was in place. "You need to get used to that and not rely on pokemon to do it. It has the added benefit of building muscle, you're welcome. Additionally, you'll be making and keeping the fire for the first few days. Once I'm sure you're capable, Sozin can take over. I'll take care of getting us water from the river. We will be hunting together. Tracking will be easier in the snow, but it's still a good skill. Hunting and trapping, too. That'll probably be every afternoon.

"We'll be training every morning and every night. Obviously, the morning session will be significantly harder. Every fifth day, we'll do a light calisthenics session in the morning before exploring the area. Towards the end of the trip, we might go every third or fourth day, but that's dependent on how you and Drift are doing training wise. Sound good?"

"Works for me. Are you intending on the exploration days to be when we try to catch pokemon?"

Cal nodded, "Yeah. The idea is for you and Drift to develop a decent bond and training schedule before you tack on another pokemon. That said, any ideas on your second?"

"I tried to catch a fighting type when I was looking for a starter. So a machop or meditite is probably the priority. I want to stay away from more ice types, though I wouldn't say no to a swinub. Other than that, a rhyhorn or some other rock type would be good."

"Seems easy enough. If we find any caves, we'll take a look for some rock types. Otherwise, we can keep an eye out for wandering machop and meditite. Any other goals you have for this trip?"

Daniel though for a moment, "Setting up mobility drills for Drift. That's what I need to focus on the most according to Berg. When he evolves, it becomes much harder to train flexibility and speed."

"That'll be what the morning training will focus on for Drift then. At night we can work on strength and move development," Cal stated. He settled on a rock along the perimeter before saying, "Alright, get us a fire going then take the rest of the afternoon off. We'll start in the morning."

* * *

Cal was, to put it nicely, a slave driver. He somehow managed to supervise Daniel and Drift as well as his team concurrently. Daniel wasn't sure what exactly he had his team working on, but they were constantly doing different drills. Every once in a while, Cal would provide more direction to his team, though Daniel never heard what was said. When Cal wasn't yelling at Daniel or directing his team, the older man was doing pull ups from a tree branch, push ups in the snow, or some other exercise.

Daniel spent the morning running from the camp to river and back. It was only about a half of a mile lap, but running through the snow added a level of difficulty. After every other lap, he had the choice of chopping wood for fifteen minutes, doing push ups, or doing pull ups from the same branch Cal used. After every fourth lap, he took a break to drink water and direct Drift through drills for half an hour or so. He only threw up four times the first morning, something he was actually proud of considering he ran for a combined eight miles along with the other exercises.

Cal had Rook and Bruno, his rhyhorn and machamp, set up an obstacle course for Drift the night before. The rock course wouldn't allow Drift to knock over obstacles out of laziness, but forced him to move his way through properly. Daniel had the shrew run a lap to the river after every completion before doing the course again. During his breaks, Daniel would have Drift run through different stretches, oftentimes Daniel would push and prod until the sandshrew got into the correct form and would then hold his pokemon there for a minute.

After nearly five hours, Daniel and Drift collapsed at camp to the amusement of Cal and his team. "Good work, Danny. You too, Drift." Cal complimented as he provided them with clean, cool water, "You guys took that seriously. I'm proud."

"I want to die." Drift groaned in agreement to his trainer's sentiment before crawling over to his trainer for a belly rub. Cal just laughed.

"Tomorrow you'll switch it up and spend more time strength training than running. That way things will even out. Now get something light to eat, we've got to get dinner for tonight."

Tracking, hunting, and trapping were things that came much easier to Daniel as they were all things touched on in the survival class. Cal did show him a few styles of traps that he didn't know, and was able to help correct some bad form with his bow, but it felt much more like they were equals in this aspect of the trip.

The first day, they set out some traps that would hopefully make things easier in the future. Additionally, they managed to kill multiple hoothoot and a stantler. "A stantler should be enough to keep us fed through tomorrow, especially with the owls," Cal said as he released Bruno to help carry the stantler back to camp. "Lesson number fifty-two. How do trainers make money?"

"Through winning battles with other trainers and placing high in competitions. Occasionally, trainers can also get hired as a bodyguard or field tech or something along those lines," Daniel responded confidently.

"Not wrong, but not complete either. Battle winnings are capped at ten percent of the smallest purse. You have to find a trainer willing and able to battle at your level and then win to make that money. If you're good, then this is a net gain, but not really sustainable until you're able to place at a decent ranking in tournaments," Cal started, "The odd jobs pay well, but they're rare. You kinda have to be in the right place at the right time to get those. And most of the time they have a badge requirement or require a specific type of pokemon.

"So the scenario is that you just spent a couple months in the wild as a newer trainer without a bankroll. You stumbled into a small town like Snowpoint and you need food and medicine and you need to pay for your gym challenge. Let's just assume the pokemon center has an available room and you don't have to pay for that. Small town, not a lot of trainers, so you can't make a lot off of battles. What do you do?"

Daniel thought for a moment. Silence reigned until he finally conceded, "I'm not sure. Try to get an hourly job at a diner or something, I guess."

"Well, I guess that would work, but that's not what I'm looking for," Cal laughed, "It all starts out in the wild. You have to hunt in the wild. Be smart about what you hunt. Take this stantler for instance. We'll probably clean the bones because we need the energy out here, but what about the antlers or the pelt? We can't eat those. But we can definitely put it in a storage ball and sell it. Now you have the money to restock before going out again."

Cal paused before continuing, "What about the pokemon you catch? The League mandates how many pokemon can be on your person. Four for anyone with less than two badges, which then goes up to six. Once you have six badges you can keep eight and at eight badges you can keep ten, this is to help trainers keep a full team trained in case of emergency. But that doesn't stop us from catching more pokemon, as long as they are designated for trading or storage, then we're good. So that baby teddiursa that you just found wandering without its mother is perfect to sell to the outpost. It wouldn't make it in the wild without its mother anyways. Now you have money for food or that shiny new TM you wanted."

Daniel nodded but remained quiet as he thought about the answer Cal had given. He wasn't really sure about it, though he couldn't argue against it. When they got back to camp, Cal worked through cleaning and preserving their kills with him. They salted some of the stantler and hung it to dry to make jerky, but began cooking the rest with Cal's team on high alert.

After the food was done cooking and they all had eaten, Cal started up the second training session. The more experienced pokemon paired up and began sparring with one another, often changing partners before continuing. Cal focused much more on his team during this session. Commenting often and setting up different parameters and pairings for a fight.

Daniel took the time to work Drift on different moves. Thus far, he only really knew how to scratch and tackle enemy pokemon. So the first step was getting him to develop some control over ice type attacks. To do this, he directed the sandshrew to freeze rocks at the boundary of camp. Daniel didn't provide much direction here, allowing the pokemon to think for itself.

After an hour, the sandshrew still hadn't succeeded, so Daniel moved on to the next drill he wanted Drift to do. Here, he had Drift scratch the rock continually. He hoped to harden his claws to develop the metal claw attack. At the end of the night, the rock was scraped up, but Drift hadn't successfully performed the attack.

The next three days happened in much the same order as the first full day at base camp. Extensive training in the morning that would leave Daniel and Drift exhausted followed by hunting for food for the next day. They ended the night with a final training session to work on different moves.

By the end of the fourth day, Drift had managed to consistently produce a powder snow attack which consisted of him manipulating a wave of snow to crash into a target. It wasn't the strongest attack, but it was a starting place and Drift could develop other moves like icy wind and, eventually, blizzard from this basis. The sandshrew had yet to truly get metal claw down, though there was noticeable improvement. Each night, the gouges in the rock grew deeper.

"I said it the first day, but I'll say it again now. I'm proud of you two," Cal said as they set out from camp the morning of the fifth day. Cal had left Delta and April, his staraptor and azumarill, to watch over the camp, but had the rest of his team on hand with Magneto floating behind him. Drift was also out of the pokeball, keeping up much better with the trainers due to the mobility and speed exercises.

"It's all thanks to you," Daniel deflected. Yes, he and Drift worked hard, but he had no doubt that they wouldn't have had a quarter of the development they had without the more experienced trainer. "So what's the plan for today?"

"Well, I'm not sure if you noticed, but yesterday I sent Nyra off in the morning to look for a fighter for ya. She got back while we were training last night. Apparently there's a group of 'em a couple miles north of us. The plan is to have Snapper give us a blackout in case they're meditites so we can sneak up on them. Then, it'll be up to you to catch your second 'mon."

"That's awesome!" Daniel cheered. "So you think I'll be able to keep up with a second pokemon?"

"You'll do great. Might have to take a couple mornings to get it used to you, but it won't be too bad. Now, if it's a colony of meditite, you'll have to pick one out and we'll get Snapper to trap it with an anti-teleportation bubble. They can be skittish, so we'll only get one chance."

Daniel nodded and they remained quiet as they walked. Occasionally, they would come across a pokemon, but nothing interesting. Drift did catch a couple snom for food though. After about an hour or so, Cal released his krokorok and ordered it to create a small blackout around them. Another ten minutes passed and they came across a small clearing surrounded by a dense ring of trees. In the clearing was a group of a dozen meditite with two medicham. The group seemed to be working through a series of stretches that was being led by the evolved pokemon.

"Alright, make your decision and we'll have Snapper trap it." The crocodile pokemon gave a toothy grin.

Daniel watched the group for a couple minutes, looking for something that would distinguish a stronger meditite from the rest. When he found that he couldn't, he randomly picked one of the blue-bodied pokemon. "Snapper," he said to the krokorok, "I want to get the one towards the middle of the group. It's a shade darker than the others."

The krokorok nodded and dropped the blackout. As the psychic type pokemon realized the group was there, they began to teleport away. The one Daniel had specified remained in place though, trapped by the dark type.

"Alright Drift, hit it with a powder snow. Then follow up with a tackle," Daniel called out as he raced into the clearing with his starter a step ahead. A wave of snow rose up in front of the sandshrew and pummeled the fighting type pokéemon only to be quickly followed by Drift who tackled it.

The meditite took the hit and did a backwards roll to its feet. It thrust its palms forward, hitting Drift in the arm and his stomach, causing the shrew to screech in pain. "Keep your distance, powder snow again." Another wave of snow hit the meditite followed by two more. "Tackle it again then scratch until it submits!"

Drift ran forward before seeming to hit a force field. The sandshrew was raised a couple inches off the ground before being thrown a foot backwards. "Use powder snow to protect yourself." This time, Drift was successful in tackling the meditite. He sat atop the fighting type pokéemon and rained scratches on its body. At the last scratch, Daniel saw Drift's claw glow in a silvery light before scraping across the pokemon.

The meditite gave a cry in pain as Drift used metal claw once more. "Hold Drift!" Daniel called out as he primed a pokeball. Once he had a good angle, he threw the pokeball, hitting the meditite in the head. The pokemon disappeared into the ball. It shook once, then twice before the ball exploded open. When it appeared, the meditite rushed towards him, though it was quickly intercepted by a tackle from Drift. Another couple metal claws and Daniel threw a second pokeball. This time, the meditite stayed.

* * *

**Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges**  
Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
Meditite - (Not Yet Named)

 **Trainer: Cathal Sullivan - 6 Badges**  
Magmortar - Sozin  
Machamp - Bruno  
Staraptor - Delta  
Azumarill - April  
Magneton - Magneto  
Krokorok - Snapper  
Dartrix - Nyra  
Rhyhorn - Rook

**AN: Gonna start off with a personal disclaimer. This is fanfiction. I don't own pokemon, but I am taking creative liberty with the world they do own. That said, movesets, abilities, sizes, etc. are not all going to match up with the games/anime/manga (example being meditite line using teleport, which they can't in the games). Additionally, I know that people can only have 6 pokemon in canon, I am taking some liberty with that, and for good reason. Battles are still limited to 6 pokemon, but a trainer can have more than that just in case. I just want to get that out there before I get some review blasting me just because they didn't read clearly or think about the fact that this is a story.**

**Now that that's out of the way, I hope you enjoyed Chapter 3. Gonna give a shout out to Silder (on FFnet) who looked over this for me, thank you very much friend. Leave a review and let me know what you think or if you see anything I can improve on!**


	4. Basilica and Boogle

Chapter 4: Basilica and Boogle

Daniel did not release the meditite for the rest of their foray away from camp. After the obligatory congratulations from Cal and making sure Drift was okay, they continued exploring. The rest of the day was much more easy going without the pressure of remaining alert in order to catch Daniel his second pokemon. As such, Daniel and Cal joked much of the time as they journeyed through the forest. The only other interesting part of the day was when they came across a wintry sawsbuck and deerling drinking from the river. The two deer pokemon scampered off quickly once Daniel and Cal approached the riverbank.

It wasn't until they returned to camp that afternoon that Daniel finally released his new pokemon. While Cal worked his team through some light drills, Daniel, with his starter beside him, let the meditite out of its ball. The humanoid pokemon immediately tried to teleport away only to be returned to the pokeball.

That was another modern miracle of the pokeball technology. Pokeballs had a setting that would return a pokemon once it left a certain radius from the ball. The technology was implemented specifically for new pokemon who would try to run or teleport away. Daniel wasn't sure how it worked in general, much less how it stopped teleportation, but he was happy it did.

It took another two times before the meditite did not try to escape. Instead it looked questioningly at Daniel. _"Why do you entrap me, human?"_ Daniel jumped in surprise at the voice in his mind. The voice sounded like that of a frustrated woman.

He heard stories and read reports that psychic type pokemon were able to speak and understand human language almost immediately. He also knew of the reports that psychics could communicate telepathically. It was a completely different experience, though, to hear the pokemon speaking in his head.

"I want you to join my team. My name is Daniel, and this is Drift," Daniel spoke, gesturing to himself then to the sandshrew at his feet.

_"You are not much of a 'team', human."_

"We were enough of a team to beat you," he said, ignoring the refusal to use his name.

_"You trapped me and not my brothers and sisters. The fight was not fair."_

That was partially true. Daniel did have Cal's krokorok keep the meditite from teleporting away, but he felt like the fight itself was fair. He considered his response before asking, "So if you were to battle Drift again, would you accept that as a fair fight?"

Daniel could see the inner turmoil on the pokemon's face as it looked between Daniel and Drift. Finally, it said, _"The ice shrew is more powerful than I."_

"So you'll have no problem being part of the team then, right?" Daniel prodded.

_"I will accept my role as vassal."_

Daniel nodded in acceptance. It wasn't necessarily the enthusiasm he had hoped for, but at least the meditite wasn't going to put up a fight for the next couple weeks. "I can live with that for now. I hope you come to see us as a team and family though. What should I call you?"

_"My name cannot be translated to your language. I will allow you to pose a suitable substitute."_

Daniel thought for a minute, "What about Sasha?" It was the first name that popped into his head that sounded decent for the pokemon.

 _"That will suffice,"_ the newly dubbed Sasha responded.

It was later that night after Cal had turned in that Daniel finally took the time to research the meditite line on his pokedex. He realized, somewhat ashamed, that he should have prioritized this research before releasing Sasha, but it wasn't something he could change.

_Meditite, the Meditate Pokemon._

_Meditite are a fighting and psychic type pokemon that are humanoid in appearance. Their bodies are mostly blue, though their heads are white. Originally discovered in the Hoenn region, this pokemon prefers to live in remote, quiet areas such as undeveloped mountains, in order to train peacefully._

_Meditite train themselves through daily meditation and yoga. When forced to fight, meditite, and their evolution medicham, are surprisingly strong. Though they are not as physically strong as their pure fighting type counterparts, the machop line, it is believed that the meditite line is able to utilize their brain power to more efficiently use their muscles. It has been hypothesized that if a machamp were similarly able to do this, it would be the strongest pokemon discovered, surpassing pokemon such as slaking._

_In order to better train their bodies, meditite fast for as long as they can. When they do eat, they eat only a single berry before fasting again for a longer period of time. This was discovered to be the key to their evolution by monks in Hoenn region centuries ago. Once a meditite can fast for a full lunar cycle and defeat an opponent afterwards, they will evolve into a medicham._

Daniel stuck his head out of his tent and looked at the meditite that seemed to be sleeping in a prayer pose. He idly wondered how long the pokemon could go without eating now. After a moment, he turned back in and let himself drift off to sleep.

The following weeks passed in much the same way the first week had gone, the only difference being that Daniel now split his attention between his two pokemon and his own drills. It helped that Sasha was already acclimated to a life of training, though she wasn't pleased when Daniel asked that she do strength training and running drills in addition to her regular yoga and meditation.

Daniel learned that the meditite could go three days without eating and that she preferred rawst berries over anything because the bitterness helped strengthen her constitution. Sasha had a rudimentary understanding of the move confusion and was starting to develop some fighting type techniques, but not enough to use in battle. Daniel had her split the evening training sessions between moving objects with confusion and learning from Bruno, Cal's machamp.

Drift, on the other hand, continued to progress with both metal claw and powder snow. The little shrew squeaked happily every time he managed to carve a rock in two with the steel type move. Daniel started working with him to develop defense curl, which would help raise his defense in battle, and ice ball which would serve as a basis for stronger ice type moves like icicle crash.

Daniel's personal development seemed to stall a few days after catching Sasha. He was running slower, unable to do as many push ups and pull ups, and was struggling to pick up rocks that felt light days before. When he brought the issue up to Cal, the older trainer suggested he take a couple days to rest and stretch before continuing. When that seemed to help, Daniel made sure to take a day to meditate and practice yoga with his meditite in order for his muscles to recuperate.

Despite going out to explore every few days, nothing truly interesting happened. They came back to camp once to find a herd of stantler in the clearing, though the herd quickly departed at the presence of the two trainers. Cal guessed that the lack of pokemon was because the pokemon living in the area were all naturally skittish and avoided the group as much as possible.

It wasn't until they took a trip to the mountains about a week before they planned to return to Snowpoint that they came across something interesting. They were walking along the base of the mountain about an hour away from camp, and just as they were wrapping around to the north face of the mountain, they saw it.

"Holy Heatran."

"No… It can't be real!"

Cal and Daniel spoke at the same time, both in shock. Before them, carved into the face of the mountain, was a giant temple. The structure rose over two hundred feet up the mountain with intricate columns and facades carved into the stone. One either side of the structure were openings with three golems, placed vertically up the side of the temple. Each golem was unique in design, though none less imposing than the others. At the base of the temple was a massive staircase leading to a cavernous opening.

"It's not possible," Daniel muttered. His knees gave out and fell to the snow.

"Danny, what is this?" Cal asked. Daniel just muttered to himself, unable to comprehend the temple before him. He heard Cal speaking, but the words weren't registering. "Daniel!" Cal finally yelled, shaking Daniel's shoulders violently.

"This… this is Regigigas' eternal prison," he finally said.

"Regi-what? Eternal prison? Heatran's ass, Danny. What the fuck are you talking about?"

Daniel swallowed past the lump in his throat before saying, "There's this cult in Snowpoint. It's small, and gets made fun of a lot. I've heard they're pretty sketchy. They call themselves Brotherhood of Titans. I never associated with them, but rumors spread, ya know? They believe there is this pokemon - Regigigas - who placed the continents by moving them with these giant ropes. Once he placed the continents, Regigigas created these six golems, or titans, in his image to govern the world, answering only to him."

Daniel's throat constricted a bit. He coughed a couple times to clear it before continuing, "Supposedly, for a time, mankind worshipped Regigigas and his governors. But eventually, they grew fearful of their ruler. They went to the golems and begged them to turn against Regigigas and imprison him for eternity. The golems did, locking him away, telling no one where the prison was. They said that Regigigas could only be released through the combined power of the six golems. So, mankind turned on the golems and imprisoned them in their own caves around the world, so they could never unite again to free their maker."

"Holy shit," Cal sputtered. Daniel choked out a laugh but didn't respond. "So you think this is the prison?"

"The cult believes it to be somewhere in the mountains north of Snowpoint, though there's no proof the legend is even real. They're small though and don't have the ability or resources to really fund an exploration," Daniel answered, "I guess we found the proof for them." He slowly stood, inspecting each of the carved golems. One was smooth, with rounded edges. The one above it looked like it was made from boulders stuck together. The next was completely straight and rigid, almost crystalline, though made of stone. On the other side, the bottom golem looked like a ball with a pair of jaws about to swallow it. The one above it looked like a spiky ball with lightning bolts shooting from either side. In the final opening, the golem was missing. In its place was a pile of rubble.

As if reading Daniel's mind, Cal queried, "I wonder what that last one is supposed to look like."

Not wanting to pass up the chance, the pair took multiple pictures of the temple, making sure to get pictures of themselves with it behind them. Finally Cal said, "Dude, you know we gotta check it out inside, right?"

"You're telling me you want to break into the prison of some legendary titan that could kill us with a thought?"

Cal shot back quickly, "You're telling me that you want to be an explorer but you're too afraid to take this opportunity?"

Stumped and called out, Daniel relented. It was an exciting prospect, so it wasn't like he was going to put up too much of a fight. "Drift, Sasha, you guys up for it?"

The sandshrew gave a resolute nod, chirping excitedly. The meditite looked thoughtful before her melodic voice resounded in his head, _"I do not believe this to be wise, but I shall follow as is my duty."_

Decision made, Daniel positioned his pokedex to video the exploration from his breast pocket and the group made their way up the carved stone stairs and into the basilica. Once inside, Cal returned all his pokemon aside from Magneto and Bruno, his magneton and machamp. He ordered the magneton to use flash in order to traverse the dark building.

The inside of the temple was just as grand as the outside, with towering ceilings supported by massive stone columns. The walls were covered in carvings depicting a giant titan moving islands and ruling over the world. "This is amazing," Daniel whispered, too in awe to raise his voice any higher. His friend nodded in agreement.

They ventured deeper into the building, eventually finding a set of stairs going deeper into the ground. They followed the stairs down to the next floor where they continued back towards the front of the temple. They continued to move further into the earth for another three floors before being met with a dead end.

The wall before them was covered with round protrusions sticking out from the wall. The bumps were equally spaced in what appeared to be a grid-like pattern, though there were multiple places where some were missing. The walls lining the room were covered in weird hieroglyphs that were vaguely shaped like letters. There was no discernable pattern to the glyphs that Daniel could find. At the base of the dead end were six empty, massive pedestals with ornate carvings of the same letter-like hieroglyphs around them.

"If that legend is true," Daniel began softly, "Then I bet that Regigigas is behind that wall and the other golems need to be on those pedestals to release him."

 _"Human, it is not right for us to be in this place! We should depart immediately!"_ Sasha's voice was alarmed. Daniel and Cal ignored the meditite and moved towards different pedestals. As Daniel reached out to touch the pedestal, a loud noise shook the room, almost as if the mountain itself was groaning. Daniel caught himself on the platform and looked over at Cal. The two locked eyes before turning to race from the room, their pokemon following behind them.

Dust fell from the ceiling as they ran up through the temple. His lungs burned, though adrenaline spurred him onward. On the second floor, Daniel realized that Drift was no longer behind him. He skidded to a stop and whipped around. The sandshrew was stopped about a hundred yards back, staring at something. Daniel heard Cal yelling at him to keep running, but he ignored him and ran back to his starter.

In front of the sandshrew was a short hallway branching off from the main room. Daniel could see it open up into another room with a faint, blue light glowing from within. Entranced, Daniel made his way into the room to find a massive, baby blue stone slab. The face of the slab was rough, like sandpaper, though the edges seemed rounded and smooth. Engraved into the rough stone was: _**"When the universe was created, its shards became this Plate."**_

"Whoa," he breathed as he reached out to brush his fingers against the stone. As he did, the temperature dropped sharply and the stone slab dissolved like dust. "What the fuck?!" Daniel exclaimed, looking erratically between his hand and where the stone once stood. Drift grunted and chirped angrily along with him.

 _"Daniel, we must leave. Now!"_ Sasha's voice entered his mind once more, sounding further away than before. The use of his name tore him from his thoughts and he raced from the room.

"What the hell man?!" Cal yelled as he exited the temple ten minutes later, "You just disappeared on me! I thought you were a goner! Then the fucking temperature dropped like fifty degrees. Bruno passed out from it!"

"Drift found this other room," Daniel explained, going on to tell the older trainer about the plate, the inscription, and the sharp cold that came after he touched it.

"What the fuck did we get ourselves into?" Cal finally said after a few moments of silence.

"Yeah, I don't know. But we should get out of here. And Cal?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think we should tell anyone about this. I think that cult in Snowpoint wants to release that thing," Daniel said as they started walking quickly away from the elaborate prison.

"Why the fuck would they want that?" Daniel didn't have an answer for his friend and they remained silent the rest of the way back to camp.

* * *

After the events of the prison, they didn't venture out from the camp beyond hunting. The mood was somber and tense and the two trainers went about training with a silent rigor. Daniel was scared after the experience. That fear was intensified by the knowledge that Cal, a much better trainer than him, was also terrified.

It all came to a head a couple nights later when Daniel finally broke the silence between them. "Cal, what are we supposed to do with this?" He didn't need to elaborate. He knew that Cal understood.

"I don't know, Danny," his friend sighed. "I'm scared just like you, but I don't think there's anything we can do. I mean, fuck, these are gods!" When Daniel didn't immediately respond, Cal continued, "We hear all these stories of legendaries growing up. Our whole culture revolves around them. But they've been absent for centuries. Nobody ever really thought that… "

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Daniel finally spoke up after a few moments of silence. "So what? We keep it to ourselves and hope nobody ever finds this place again?"

"I guess. I don't think that Champion Akai could even combat whatever that was. Hell, I doubt all the champions combined could. So I think that's our best bet. Forget about it and hope." Daniel nodded and let the matter rest.

The following days passed with less tension, though with the same intensity in their training. They had to increase the difficulty of Drift's obstacle course to keep challenging the sandshrew. Sasha even ran the course a couple times to test herself, though she quickly deemed it too easy. Considering the meditite was already a very flexible and mobile pokemon, Daniel wasn't surprised by the result. Sasha was able to consistently perform confusion, though her fighting techniques still needed work.

With the days growing shorter, Daniel knew their time away from the city was coming to an end. The end of summer meant that the snow would almost constantly fall and pokemon would either venture south or begin to hibernate. Daniel brought his observations up to Cal one afternoon and they planned to head back the next day.

That night, they were startled awake by a piercing screech. Daniel burst from his tent to find Cal doing the same with his dartrix, Nyra, acting disgruntled. The pair was just barely visible in the glow of the embers. The owl pokemon had been keeping watch at night as it was the least likely to fall asleep at night or be noticed by wild pokemon. "Something's wrong," Cal muttered as he looked around. Daniel nodded and made sure his pokemon were awake and alert.

 _"Human, I do not sense anything."_ Sasha told him. He relayed the information to the older trainer, though it did nothing to sooth his nerves.

Cal released the rest of his pokemon before ordering his magmortar, "Sozin, light it up." The hulking fire pokemon launched a pillar of flames into the air from its cannon-like hand. In the light of the fire, Daniel saw a dozen or more black pokemon with red feathers sprouting from their head. Behind them were a handful more with full headdresses.

"Shit. Sozin, Rook take the north. Bruno, Magneto, south. April, you're on Danny. Snapper, on me. Delta, Nyra try to pick them off from the sky!" Cal whipped out a large hunting knife as he called out orders to his team. There was a flurry of movement and the battle began.

The magmortar shot gouts of flame towards the wild weasels as the rhyhorn beside it battled those who got too close. The machamp and magneton employed a similar strategy on the opposite side of camp. Daniel didn't see what was happening with Cal, though he heard commotion coming from that direction.

Cal's azumarill, which was guarding him, used a combination of water and fairy type attacks, trying to keep the pokemon at bay. She was successful at first, though soon began to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacking pokemon. Daniel ordered Drift and Sasha to help the water bunny out. He pulled out his own hunting knife as his sandshrew slammed into a sneasel with a glowing metal claw.

Flashes of fire and the crackle of lightning illuminated the camp sporadically, leaving Daniel with the impression of fighting in a nightclub. Noises of battle filled the air, disorienting him just as much as the flashes of light.

In the light of a thunderbolt, Daniel saw his meditite go down to a sneasel's icy slash. He quickly pointed her pokeball in that general direction and returned her. Moments later, he saw a weavile flip Drift onto his back. Just as the feral pokemon was going to carve up his starter's soft stomach, Daniel dove forward and pulled the pokemon away.

Wrestling an evolved pokemon with razor sharp claws like a weavile was not something that Daniel ever thought he would do, or desired to do. Still, he pulled the dark type back in a headlock, away from his starter. The weavile lashed out, its icy claws shredding through Daniel's jacket and his arm, the wounds immediately freezing over. The cold seemed to extend all the way to his bones. With an exclamation of pain, Daniel stabbed the weasel pokemon with the hunting knife, feeling the blade poke his sternum through the pokemon's body. Warm liquid covered his hand and the smell of copper assaulted his senses.

"Drift!" He called out to his starter, throwing the now dead weavile to the ground. He heard his sandshrew give an acknowledging grunt before he was illuminated by another gout of flame. Daniel nearly sighed despite the battle at the sight of his starter slashing at a sneasel with metal claws, which were devastatingly effective. Beside him, April was pounding on two others with little trouble, though the azumarill was covered in cuts with ice crystals in them.

A sneasel broke away from April and ran at him with its claws extended. Daniel managed to kick the pokemon away before it was tackled by Drift. He heard some pained grunts from his sandshrew as the sneasel managed to catch his stomach. The fur stained red as blood seeped from the cut. Drift fought through the pain though, bashing the sneasel with a headbutt and the dark type fainted.

Taking a moment, Daniel looked around the camp. Cal's team seemed to be functioning well on their own, though there were many more wild pokemon than they originally saw. Turning to the opposite side of the camp, Daniel watched as a weavile snuck behind Cal and easily slashed through his calf. The older trainer gave a shout of pain as he fell to the ground.

Daniel yelled and took off towards his friend, tackling the weavile to the ground before it could slit Cal's throat. Alerted by the human shouts, both Cal's team and the wild pokemon gravitated to the pair. Ignoring the extra pokemon around him, Daniel stabbed the weavile once, twice, three times, before it lay still with blood and fur splattering the ground. As it did, he felt the weight of something land on his back and he was forced to the ground.

Sharp lines of icy pain lanced across his back and then the weight was suddenly gone. He felt a piece of wood being shoved into his mouth before he heard, "Magneto, now!" There was a bright light and a wave of electricity ran through him. His jaws locked tightly onto the piece of wood in his mouth as his body shook before everything went black.

* * *

Daniel woke in a hot embrace, though he only felt a thin t-shirt and pants on his body. He tried to move but found himself restricted by red and orange arms. "Easy there, Danny. You need the warmth right now." He looked to the left and saw Cal sitting on a stump with his right leg extended and wrapped in bandages.

"What?" his voice came out like a croak. His throat felt like a desert. A tugging on his pant leg had him looking down to find his sandshrew staring up at him with concern. The shrew's belly was still red, though it looked like the cut had mostly been healed. His icy shell had scrapes and chips on it from the dark type pokemons' attacks. At being noticed, Drift blew snowflakes at Daniel.

"You took quite a few hits from those weasels. Causes your core temp to drop. You have hypothermia. Sozin's keeping you warm for now." Daniel returned his attention to the older trainer.

"What happened?"

"We were attacked by a pack of sneasel and weavile. Pack? Group? What do you-"

"I think it's a boogle. A group of sneasel and weavile are called a boogle." Daniel interrupted.

"The fuck? Why would anyone call something that deadly and vicious a boogle?! It's not a fucking group of clowns!" Daniel just shrugged and his friend continued, "Anyways, they attacked. Loads of 'em. We were doing alright until I went down. I saw you tackle that weavile to save me, by the way, thanks for that. Well, after you saved me, the rest of them kinda converged on us. Wasn't enough room for my team to get 'em off us, so I had Magneto use discharge. We got caught in it, but with that many pokemon around, the damage was mitigated though you still passed out.

"My team is used to the paralysis from training, so they were able to fight it off and pull the weasels off us and take most of them out before they recovered. When the weavile and sneasel finally did recover, they fled. That was something like eight hours ago. You took the worst of it, I think. Haven't seen your meditite, but her pokeball isn't saying she's critical."

Daniel nodded, happy that his pokemon were okay, though he wasn't sure he really understood the rest of the story. "So what's the plan now?" He finally asked.

His friend shrugged. "I can't walk. Potions only do so much and we didn't get any blissey egg extract. So as soon as you're warm enough, Delta will fly you back to Snowpoint before coming back for me. She can't take us both, but it's only a couple hour flight for her, so I should be alright with my team til she gets back."

It took an hour for him to warm up, pack the camp, and harvest the valuable parts of the dead sneasel and weavile. Cal wasn't much help due to not being able to walk at all, though he ordered his team to help where they could. Nearly four hours after he regained consciousness, Daniel was left in front of the hospital by Cal's staraptor.

"How can I help you, young man?" The receptionist asked as he stumbled up to the desk.

"My friend and I were attacked by a group of weavile. Pretty sure I have hypothermia and multiple lacerations. My friend can't walk; his staraptor is flying him here now." The receptionist gave a frantic nod before hitting a few buttons at her computer. Within minutes, Daniel was wrapped in blankets and contemplating how crazy the last twenty-four hours had been.

* * *

 **Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges  
** Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
Meditite - Sasha

 **Trainer: Cathal Sullivan - 6 Badges  
** Magmortar - Sozin  
Machamp - Bruno  
Staraptor - Delta  
Azumarill - April  
Magneton - Magneto  
Krokorok - Snapper  
Dartrix - Nyra  
Rhyhorn - Rook

**AN: I was pretty excited about this chapter so there was a really fast turn around. Obviously, I'm not going to be spitting out chapters every other day. Again, I'm taking a lot of freedom with certain aspects of the pokemon world. The Regigigas myth is a combination between my spin on the canon portrayal and a theory I saw about how there is actually 7 Regis because each one has 7 eyes. It felt pretty plausible to me, so I did leave one unknown Regi just in case TPC reveals a final one in between now and when that plot arc gets readdressed.**

**Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Leave a review with your thoughts or criticisms, I appreciate both!**


	5. Ring of Fire

Chapter 5: Ring of Fire

"You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Pugh," the doctor told him the next morning, "You and your friend."

Daniel just nodded. It had been a crazy night following the weavile attack. He was treated for hypothermia, the gashes on his arm and back were stitched up, and the electrical burns on his extremities were cared for. He wasn't sure what all Cal went through, but he knew surgery was involved. He glanced down at his left arm. It looked like it was attacked by a cheese grater and then a toddler colored all over it with a black marker.

"Your back looks much the same. Weavile attacks freeze over immediately. No loss of blood, which is probably what saved both your lives, but causes frostbite around the wound. It wasn't severe, so the pain and discoloration will fade, but you'll probably be dealing with a loss of feeling in that arm for the rest of your life," the doctor said, "The stitches will fall out in three weeks, by which time the cuts should be sealed."

Daniel finally looked up at the man, taking note of his name that was pinned to his chest: Dr. Barry Hooker. "How's Cal?"

"Mr. Sullivan went through surgery to repair his leg last night. He has yet to wake up, but that is normal. He'll have trouble walking for a bit, but he'll be just fine."

"What about my pokemon?" Due to the fact that neither of his pokemon were in critical condition, Daniel was required to sign multiple waivers releasing the hospital to check them into the pokemon center in his stead the night before.

The doctor clicked through some things on his tablet before responding, "We don't have an update yet. They were transferred to the center, but they are experiencing a higher volume with the number of gym challenges this late in the season. I wouldn't worry though, neither had any life threatening injuries."

"So when can I get out of here?"

Dr. Hooker swiped through a few more tabs, "Everything looks good here, so just as soon as you pay at the check out desk, you are cleared to go. That said, there's a pair of rangers here to talk with you about what happened. They need to document all pokemon attacks, so I don't think you're in any trouble."

Daniel thanked the doctor and he left, letting the rangers into the room. "Ranger Smith! It's nice to see you," he said, recognizing one of the two rangers.

"Howdy, Pugh," the man greeted with a wave, "This is Ranger Trainee Johnson, he's shadowin' me for the next couple weeks to get an idea of all the roles and responsibilities. That alrigh' with yeh?" When Daniel nodded, the ranger continued, "Alrigh' then. Let's get to it. As the doc said, yeh ain't in any trouble. Just gotta get a report done since humans were hospitalized in an attack. So, where were y'all at when it happened?"

"We were like a two or three day hike north of Snowpoint. Cal, my friend, found a clearing in the woods at the foot of the mountains."

"Alrigh', so tell me how it all happened. Any details yeh can think of," the ranger said.

Daniel related the story as best he could while the trainee ranger took notes on the story. "And then I passed out. When I came to again, it was the next day. I packed up, and Cal had his staraptor fly me here before returning for himself."

"Helluva story, kid," Ranger Smith shook his head, "Why didn't ya call the rangers?"

"It happened so fast," he responded, "There was no time to send an alert out after we found out about the weavile. And afterwards, I don't know. Cal told me, but I don't really remember what he said. The nurses told me that confusion and short term memory loss was a common side effect of hypothermia."

The ranger nodded, wishing him well before departing. Daniel followed soon after, making his way to the check out desk to pay the bill before leaving.

There were certain benefits to being a trainer. Pokemon centers provided free treatment to pokemon. Ranger outposts along routes would provide lodging to travelling trainers. And the League covered half of all trainer hospital expenses. The world of pokemon was dangerous. As much as civilians and trainers alike made sport of it, trainers were necessary to keep mankind safe from wild pokemon. As such, the life of a trainer was dangerous. The League, in order to not scare away prospective trainers, stepped in to cover half of any trainer's hospital expenses. Daniel was incredibly thankful, as it meant he would be able to cover the bill without telling his parents.

After settling the bill, Daniel made his way over to the pokemon center. As he walked, he sent Cal a quick text checking in on his friend and asking to be kept updated on his status. He also sent a message to his parents, letting them know he would be home later that day. Once he got to the center, he made sure to check in before going to the food court. He made himself a large salad for an early lunch. He wasn't a vegetarian or activist. But after a month of living off of game with a few berries mixed in, he wanted a vegetable.

His attention was pulled to a television in the corner shortly after he finished the salad. The news reporter sat in front of a map of Sinnoh that was colored blue with numbers at various cities. "Meteorologists and researchers alike are still baffled by the extreme cold front that has swept the nation. Models show the temperature drop originated somewhere north of Snowpoint and has spread across Sinnoh. Some theorists have suggested that an undiscovered ice type pokemon on par with the legendary Articuno was either born or awoken to cause the front. The temperature drop has even been reported in Hoenn and Kalos. What has confused scientists even more is that the temperatures seemed to return to normal hours later."

"Trainer Pugh!" a female voice came over the intercom system, "Trainer Pugh, your pokemon are ready."

Daniel went to retrieve his two pokemon before making his way home.

"Daniel! You're home earlier than we thought!" His mother exclaimed, greeting him with a large hug after he surprised her in the kitchen.

He shrugged as he pulled away from his mother, "Well, my pokemon got released from the center a little earlier than I expected, so I'm here early. Is that roast starly you're making? Mm mashed potatoes too!"

"Hands off, mister!"

His hand smarted from the wooden spoon that his mother used to defend the food. Wringing out his hand, he asked, "So is Dad at the school?" When his mother nodded, he said, "I'm gonna take my team out in the back to check in on them. Let me know when dad gets back, yeah? That way I only have to make introductions and tell the story once."

"That's fine. He should be home shortly, dinner will be ready at five," his mother responded as she stuck the pot of mashed potatoes in a warming drawer.

He released Drift first once he was outside. The sandshrew excited accepted a belly rub before allowing Daniel to inspect the rest of him. There was a faint line on his stomach where a sneasel had cut him. Like he had seen the day before, there were small chips and scratches on his icy exterior. "Did you even feel these?" he asked as he traced one of the scratches along his starter's back. The ice type shook his head with a proud chirp. "Of course you didn't. Why would I even think such a thing?" Drift headbutted him firmly, though not strong enough to be painful.

After a few more moments alone with his starter, he released Sasha, his meditite. The small, blue pokemon bore no evidence of the battle from the previous night, she also did not lash out as if the battle was still happening. "How are you feeling, Sasha?"

" _I have been rejuvenated. I am indebted to you for preserving my life force,"_ the pokemon spoke mentally, her feminie voice soft and composed as always.

Daniel shook his head, "You do not owe me, Sasha. We're a team and a family, remember?"

The meditite nodded and asked, " _How did you fare? And the ice shrew?"_

"Drift is fine, only a couple of scratches. I had to have some work done on my arm and my back from the attack," Daniel responded. He pulled off his jacket and rolled his sleeve up to show his left arm to his pokemon. Drift sniffed at one of the stitched cuts and gave it a gentle lick. "My back supposedly looks the same, but I am fine apart from the numbness."

" _For one so unsuited to battle such creatures, your skill and bravery are commendable."_

"Thanks Sasha," he responded with an exaggerated eye roll as he pulled his jacket back on. "So, this is where we'll be staying for a while. It's where I grew up. Sasha, you'll meet my parents later. I want to get some strength back in my arm before challenging the gym. Until then, we'll probably be training here, though it'll be different than our time with Cal." Both his pokemon nodded.

"Daniel! I am happy to see you, son!" he turned to find his dad walking out of the house, his mom not far behind. Daniel greeted his father with a one-armed hug before introducing his parents to Sasha. After checking to make sure both of his pokemon were happy to remain outside - Drift was not allowed inside and Sasha was happy to train in the cold - Daniel and his parents returned to the kitchen.

"So, I'm sure you have plenty of stories after being gone for a month." It was a question, but Daniel could hear a hint of anticipation in his father's voice. Daniel spent the next hour relaying the events of his past month in the wild. He spent a lot of time talking about catching and training Sasha as well as the skills Cal taught him. He purposely said nothing about Regigigas' prison or the weavile attack; the former because it scared him and the latter because it would scare his parents. Unfortunately, he wouldn't get away unscathed.

"So what happened to your arm?" his mother asked once he stopped talking.

"You saw?"

"His arm?"

Daniel and his father both spoke out at the same time. Daniel hurriedly began forming up a story that would appease his parents.

"Yes, I saw you show your pokemon from the kitchen window. And yes, something has happened to his arm and I want to know." Daniel flinched slightly at the no nonsense tone in his mother's voice. He slowly rolled up his left sleeve to show his arm as a stall attempt.

After both his parents fretted over him for a minute, he said, "We were already on the way back. It took us a little longer than we thought. But the city was so close, so we decided to risk traveling at night to make it back without camping again. A sneasel got the jump on us in the dark. He knocked Drift over and I stepped in to save him. It turned on me and got a couple slashes in before we could knock it out."

It was a lie. But he hoped that it was close enough to the truth to be believable. He pressed on, saying, "I spent the night at the hospital last night just to make sure everything was okay. Sneasel cuts cause minor frostbite, so it looks worse than it is. The color will fade and the stitches will fall out in a couple weeks. I'm fine, really. I didn't say anything because I know how bad it looks."

Neither of his parents looked happy, but they didn't say anything immediately. After a few minutes, his father finally let out a heaving sigh and said, "We worry about you Daniel. It's our job. Just be careful please."

"I will, I learned my lesson," he nodded and hugged them both, grateful that they bought his lie. The rest of the night was spent enjoying his parents' company and catching up with them.

The next few days passed in much the same way that the previous month had: with lots of training. Being at home and not needing to hunt for meals, Daniel split their normal morning session into two. One earlier in the morning for mobility and speed drills and one around noon for strength building. He left the nightly move training session alone, wanting to continue developing those skills with his pokemon. Sasha, in particular, loved the new routine as it left her significantly larger portions of time to meditate and practice yoga.

Also during this time, Daniel took a trip to the trainer outpost to sell the items they had foraged in the wild. He had all of the weavile and sneasel feathers and claws as well as a large number of other items. Daniel sold the weavile and sneasel parts separately so it was easier to give Cal his share of that money. He bought a new winter jacket after his first was ripped apart by the weavile. He also took the time to order a custom blend of food for Drift that was high in both magnesium and vitamin C. It was expensive, but if Leader Berg was to be believed, worth it. With the decent chunk of money he pulled in from hunting, Daniel still had plenty to pay for a gym challenge and travel south when the time came.

After being home for four days, he finally got a substantial message from Cal. Earlier in the week, Cal had sent Daniel a short message confirming he was okay and out of the hospital, but Cal had been silent since. This message, however, read:

' _Danny, sorry about ghosting you, had to get something in order after the surgery. I've got my prelim battle coming up shortly. Wanna get us a private training room at the pokemon center for afterwards? See ya later man!'_

Daniel arrived at the center before his friend and reserved a room for them both. He let his two pokemon out and worked them through a few low intensity drills while they waited for Cal. They didn't have to wait long before their friend showed up, looking quite pleased with himself despite the fact he was limping heavily. His right leg had a bulky, restricting brace spanning the appendage, but he apparently didn't need crutches.

"Danny, my man," his friend cheered once he closed the door behind him, "Gonna apologize in advance, but we're gonna have to keep this short. Rook evolved and I want to work with him sooner rather than later, preferably not in the vicinity of any building." That explained his good mood if his rhyhorn had evolved.

"Congrats Cal! So I take it you won your battle?"

His friend nodded, "Yeah. April and Snapper are getting looked at now. Official challenge is next Wednesday, so I have four days to work with Rook in case I need him."

"I'm sure you'll be fine. Hey, I do have your portion of the weavile sale," Daniel said, only to be waved off by Cal. Still, Daniel persisted, "Cal, you were the one who took me training and you were the one who beat most of those weasels. If it wasn't for you, I'd be dead."

"I have plenty of money, and you're just starting out. Keep it. Plus, you saved my neck, pun intended, so we're almost even. That's actually why I wanted to meet up. You saved my life, and that means something. So I gave my fam a quick call and got them to send this over. I want you to have this and I'm not taking no for an answer," Daniel's heart pounded in his chest when his friend pulled a simple red pokeball from his belt.

"Cal, I can't. I already owe you for just teaching me how to be a trainer, not to mention you and your team saved my life too."

Cal shook his head and forced the pokeball into his hands, "You can and you will. I'm not doing this just because you saved my life, though that's part of it. I'm giving you this because you're a good trainer. You have a lot of potential and you care about your pokemon. Now let him out and introduce yourself."

Daniel dumbly nodded and released the pokemon as Cal kept talking, "My family's branch of the Sullivans has traditionally bred and raised the magby line. It's why Sozin was my starter. Kai here is a little younger than we would typically sell, but I convinced my parents that he would be in good hands. He's actually the son of my dad's Magmortar, who helped him win his third elite battle before my dad retired."

The magby before him was about the same height as Drift, standing just above his knee. He was a burnt red with a bright yellow belly in the shape of a flame. The fire duck's beak matched his stomach and it had a black band around his neck. It squeaked at him in greeting.

"Cal, this is too much. He's the child of an elite pokemon."

Genetics, as much as some trainers argued against it, did play a role in the strength of a pokemon. A pokemon born from a higher level pokemon would always be stronger than a pokemon born from a weaker one. There was a chance that the child pokemon would have a rudimentary starting knowledge of stronger attacks, or special moves that the parent learned from another pokemon. Genes weren't everything though. Regardless of the parent, pokemon had generally the same ceiling in terms of strength and ability. The pokemon with stronger parents would just have a much easier time reaching that ceiling. The fact that this magby was sired by an elite pokemon meant he was worth a fortune.

"Regardless of how much it is, he's yours. This is a thanks from myself and my family. Take good care of him."

"Thank you. And tell your family I said the same to them," Daniel nodded as he stretched his hand out to the fire type who pushed his head close to the hand like a household skitty would. "So you're Kai? I like that name." The magby responded with a high pitched quack. The pokemon was hot to the touch, though not so hot that Daniel would burn himself.

"A few notes," Cal said, pulling his attention from his new pokemon, "The magby line doesn't really like snow. Their bodies are hot enough to melt it, which leads to them being in a puddle of water. Fire types don't like that. So, when you train him outside, try to clear as much of it away until he evolves. Magmar are better able to regulate their core temp and able to withstand the water a bit better. On that note, don't use water to punish him. Find a different way if he acts up."

"Anything I should focus on specifically for training?"

Cal shrugged, "When he evolves, you're going to want to put an emphasis on fire power. Magmar won't be able to evolve otherwise. Until then, just keep him in a similar training program to Drift and Sasha, and he'll be fine."

After a few more minutes, during which Daniel spoke to and played with his new magby while Cal watched with a smile, his friend said, "Listen Danny, I'm gonna run. Need to spend some time with Rook. This little guy just came in this morning though, so I wanted to get him to you sooner rather than later. My gym battle is Wednesday though, you should come watch and we'll go celebrate afterwards."

Daniel nodded and bid the older trainer goodbye with another heartfelt thanks. After Cal left, Daniel called his other two pokemon over and introduced them to Kai, his new magby. Drift curiously sniffed and batted at the duck, whereas Sasha was unsurprisingly indifferent to the new addition to the team. "Drift, want to lead him through the drills you're working on?" The sandshrew nodded with a proud grunt as if he was honored to be put in charge. Daniel chuckled as his pokemon went back to training. As they did, he took the time to look up the magby line in his 'dex.

_Magby, the Live Coal Pokemon._

_Magby are a pure fire type pokemon that baffles scientists. The pokemon and its evolved forms have various features that link it to bird-like pokemon such as the psyduck and ducklett lines, but also has features that are more reptilian in nature in line with pokemon like charmander and its evolutions. Furthermore, the magby line seems to be able to digest and live off of either diet types as well as from molten lava._

_Magby are almost exclusively found around volcanoes with their evolution, magmar. A magby's health can be determined by the color of the fire it breathes. Bright yellow or orange flames mean that the pokemon is healthy, whereas redder fire or smoke means the pokemon is sick or nearing exhaustion._

_Magby evolve into magmar around the age of one. It is currently unknown to the scientific community how magmar evolves into magmortar, however. The Sullivan family of Stark Island in the Sinnoh region originally discovered the process centuries ago and have closely guarded the secret. There have been instances of fire type trainers outside the family who have discovered the secret. Notable trainers being Leader Blaine of Cinnabar, Kanto in fifth year of Champion Lance's reign, and Gym Leader Pyro of Motostoke, Galar in the twelve year of Champion Jupiter's reign._

* * *

Despite being a couple weeks after the end of summer, the gym was still packed with people wanting to watch Cal's gym battle. Daniel, like many others, paid the admissions fee to go watch his friend in his seventh badge challenge. It felt like a win-win to him. Getting to watch a high tiered gym challenge as well as getting to support and watch his friend. And despite spending so much time with the older trainer, Daniel had never seen Cal truly battle.

" **Ladies and gentlemen!"** A voice boomed over the loudspeakers. " **Today, Trainer Cathal Sullivan is making his Tier Seven Gym Challenge against Gym Leader Andri Berg!"** The crowd roared in response. " **The challenger holds a spotless six and oh record in his previous challenges, so we have an exciting match ahead. I present to you the challenger: Trainer Sullivan!"**

The crowd roared again as Cal stepped out onto the challenger's platform. Leader Berg was announced a moment later to the crowd's excitement. Once the rules were stated, the battle began. It was, in short, a one sided battle from the beginning.

Cal led with his magneton against the leader's lapras. The large sea creature only landed a single not very effective ice beam before succumbing to multiple thunderbolts. Berg then sent out a hulking crabominable. The large ice crab wasn't quick enough to land a physical move on the magneton before it used magnet rise to float towards the ceiling of the stadium. From there, Cal's pokemon took the crab down with ranged flash cannons while avoiding the easy to track focus blasts that the crab used.

Cal's magneton was finally defeated by Leader Berg's third pokemon: a mamoswine. The mammoth pokemon used a combination of smack down and earthquake to quickly dispose of the magnetic pokemon. Cal then sent out his machamp. The four-armed pokemon took some hits from the mamoswine, though it was the victor of the battle. Bruno went down to the gym leader's jynx. The psychic type leveraged its type advantage before the machamp could land a hit.

The battle was four to three in Cal's favor, though from the grin on his friend's face would have people believe that he just won the Lily of the Valley. And while he hadn't won that tournament, once he released his starter, everyone in the stadium understood that he had won the battle. The magmortar won decisively against the gym leader's remaining pokemon, only weathering two earthquakes from the avalugg and abomasnow that Berg used last.

" **The challenger is victorious! Trainer Sullivan is now undefeated through seven challenge matches!"** Again, the crowd roared. Cal encouraged the cheering with some waves before he gave Leader Berg a respectful nod.

An hour later, Daniel took Cal to a small, out of the way bar a short distance from the pokemon center. And though Cal argued, he insisted on paying for the meal. The place was relatively empty, with only a couple university students nursing drinks with open books on the table in front of them.

Once they ordered a couple beers and burgers, Daniel said, "Congratulations man! That looked like an easy match."

Cal shrugged off the compliment, "I had a gameplan and it worked. No known ice type pokemon resists both of Magneto's types, so he was the perfect lead choice. Plus, Berg likes to lead with a part water type when he knows the challenger has a fire type pokemon. It would have been harder if he had another water in the back. It was a gamble, and things would have been harder if he had a second water or if he saved it. The whole plan just fell into place though and it showed."

Daniel rolled his eyes at the modesty. Cal had worked hard formulating that plan and that spoke volumes to how skilled a trainer he was. "So what's next for you? Eterna is your last badge, right?"

"Yeah, but I think I'm going to go home for a bit. I'm struggling to walk still, so it'll be a good vacation and time to heal. Plus, I haven't taken a true break since starting."

He nodded, a little sad that Cal wouldn't be going to Eterna. He was hopeful that they could travel together to the city, though he understood his friend's choice. Their meal came out and they spent the rest of the night enjoying themselves. When it finally came time to leave, Daniel asked, "So when are you heading back to Stark?"

"I got a teleport scheduled for tomorrow morning. Gotta say, I won't miss the snow."

Daniel laughed at that, "So this is goodbye for now then, I guess."

"I guess so. Keep up your training, Danny. You can make it, I'm sure of it. And hey, let me know if you ever make it out to Stark. I can at least tell you about some places to visit if not come join you."

"For sure. See ya, Cal!" Daniel shook the older trainer's hand before they went their separate ways.

* * *

 **Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges  
** Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
Meditite - Sasha  
Magby - Kai

**AN: So we say goodbye to our friend Cal in this chapter. I know that his gym battle was short, and I hope that his explanation to Daniel later sufficed to explain why. Cal will return later, but for now the trainers have to go their separate ways. A look ahead to next chapter, Daniel will be challenging the gym himself (I hope, things keep getting pushed to later chapters as I write).**

**Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review with any comments or constructive criticism!**


	6. Gym Leader Andri Berg

**AN: So Lerobin suggested in a review that I put Daniel's team at the beginning of the chapter rather than the end to give readers a refresher before the chapter started. So that's what I'm going to do from here on out. Thanks for the suggestion Lerobin!**

**Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges  
** Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
Meditite - Sasha  
Magby - Kai

* * *

Chapter 6: Gym Leader Andri Berg

It didn't take Daniel long to appreciate the fact that Kai, his new magby, was bred from an elite caliber pokemon. First and foremost, the fire type was smart. Where it took Drift, Daniel's starter, a week to gain an understanding of English, the magby already understood and was able to respond in coherent ways with various gestures such as nodding, hand motions, or facial expressions. That simple fact allowed for Daniel to start training with Kai far sooner than he was able to with Drift.

Kai was also stronger than Daniel imagined he would be. From the first day he started training the pokemon, he already had a good grasp on moves like ember, smog, and headbutt. He also had a rudimentary understanding of more advanced, though still basic, moves like fire punch and flame charge. Daniel guessed that those skills stemmed from his lineage.

The last thing that Daniel quickly noticed was that Kai seemed to be a born and bred competitor, with the drive and ambition to match. The fire type wanted to learn and to grow stronger. It was an attitude that took Daniel weeks to begin to cultivate in his starter and was something he was still working on with his meditite when the training didn't involve yoga. The magby threw himself into every type of drill, regardless of what was being done. Once, Daniel showed the pokemon a video of a magmortar using thunder punch in battle. Not only did Kai spend an hour trying to recreate the move, he also began demanding to watch more videos to learn. It was something Daniel found quite comical: seeing a small fire duck angrily pointing at a television set and shooting small embers when Daniel wouldn't obey.

The only true frustrating aspect of training the fire type was having to shovel snow out of his yard every morning to give the magby a drier place to train. After a week of doing this, a snow storm hit and Daniel was forced to reserve a training room at the pokemon center in order to find a dry place for the pokemon. He quickly decided that a short walk through the snow was a much better alternative to shovelling it every day, even when it wasn't actively snowing, and that became his permanent training location for the following weeks.

The center's training rooms were well equipped to handle all of Daniel's training needs. The pokemon center provided weights, resistance bands, boxes to create obstacle courses, as well as different items to help train pokemon in different moves. They also had dummies that Daniel used to let his team practice attacks on. And though he didn't use them, he knew there were also pools to train aquatic pokemon.

He was surprised at how much his team grew during their time training. All three of Daniel's pokemon were noticeably stronger and faster. Drift, his sandshrew, required him to think of harder obstacle courses every other day as he grew more comfortable and flexible in his hard body.

Drift was able to hold a metal claw in each arm and use it to attack multiple times in a combination of metal claw and fury swipes. Individual hits were slightly weaker than a regular attack, but the constant assault ended in more damage to the opponent. At least, the dummy that Drift attacked with the combo move looked worse than the one he attacked with a regular metal claw. For now, they were calling it metal fury, which sounded cool at the very least. Daniel did notice that the sandshrew's ice type moves were lacking though. He made a mental note of it, but ignored it as he would be battling ice type pokemon for the foreseeable future. Plus, he had his journey south through the snow to help his starter develop those techniques.

Sasha, his meditite, was able to extend her fast to eight days from the three she could do when Daniel first caught her. It meant that her evolution was still a long way off, but it was a clear improvement over the two months since she joined Daniel's team. She was now able to inflict pain with her confusion attack as well as confusing opponents. Drift learned this the hard way when the sandshrew fell on top of the meditite in the middle of a balancing drill. Sasha, upset by an eighty pound ice shrew falling on her, used confusion. Not only was Drift hurt, but he ran into the wall immediately after when trying to fight back. She was also constantly able to use force palm, a fighting type move that required intense focus. She would hit an opponent with an open palm causing them to fall backwards from the force of the attack. Sasha was also starting to learn power-up punch from that technique.

Kai, by the end of the first month Daniel trained him, made significant improvement towards learning fire punch. Daniel guessed that the magby managed to actually ignite his fist a little over half the time, though the fire wasn't quite significant enough to truly burn anything. On one occasion, the fire type also managed to produce some sparks from his fist while trying to replicate thunder punch from one of the videos Daniel showed him.

Throughout the month, Daniel wasn't inactive himself. He purchased a stress ball from the store to keep his left arm active throughout the healing process. The muscles screamed in protest every time they were used, but the pain was less after each use. Similarly, his back stung and resisted his movements whenever Daniel attempted to stretch or run, which was often. Still, by the time his stitches fell out, Daniel felt confident in his range of motion for both his arm and his back. At the end of the month, he was finding that some of his previous strength was starting to return.

Daniel did notice that the doctor was indeed correct that he would lose feeling in his arm. Most of his left arm, from the elbow down, had no feeling. There were small areas that had some feeling when poked with a pin, though not with a normal touch. Curiously, his back had regained much of its feeling, though Daniel was unsure why.

He spent his nights watching battle film. The League kept a database of all gym, elite, and quarterfinals or better tournament battles for the past fifty years. Daniel was sure that other leagues did the same, though he wasn't able to access them as he was only a registered trainer in the Sinnoh region. He mostly focused on gym battles against Leader Berg, though he did look at some with the sandshrew, meditite, and magby lines.

He found that almost every battle that Berg led with a water type, the challenger had a fire type pokemon in their party. Interestingly enough, when Daniel dug further, all of those challengers had used their fire type in previous League battles or in their preliminary battles, which the gym had a record of online. There were occasional outliers, but that seemed to be the trend.

Daniel waited around a week following his stitches falling out to finally make the trek to the gym. There was no real reason for him to rush the challenge now that winter had arrived, so he waited until he felt confident in his body.

Snowpoint City Gym was the largest building in the city, located on the east side, near the coast. The massive building was a supersized igloo, with thick glass blocks cut to mimic ice blocks. The exterior of the building was almost always frosted over due to the cold. The interior was much more practical than the exterior, just a decent sized foyer with a reception desk. To the left of the receptionist were stairs leading to the offices above and the training rooms below; to the right was the audience entryway into the stadium.

Unlike the times that Daniel came over the summer, the building felt dead. Over the summer, there was a constant stream of trainers or people coming to watch battles. Now, there was just a single woman behind the reception desk and no one else in sight.

Daniel approached the front desk and said, "My name is Daniel Pugh, I would like to schedule my gym challenge please."

The receptionist was the same snobby woman from the first time he was at the gym to meet with Leader Berg. Her eyes widened slightly and she quickly picked up the phone after asking him to wait a moment. "Daniel Pugh is here to schedule a challenge… Yes sir, I'll tell him," she hung up the phone and returned her attention to him and said, "Leader Berg will be down in a moment, if you wouldn't mind waiting for him."

Daniel nodded and moved to stand a few steps from the desk. The wait wasn't long, but Daniel felt incredibly awkward standing there, fidgeting every other moment. "Trainer Pugh, I am surprised to see you," the leader said when he arrived from the stairwell to the left.

Before Daniel could respond, the leader addressed the receptionist, "Beth, we'll be taking gym five. Please inform the members that it will be closed for a bit." The leader motioned for Daniel to follow and they began making their way to the basement levels.

"Why are you surprised to see me, sir?" Daniel asked once the door to the stairs closed behind them.

"Snowpoint is a small city. Not a lot of people like to live here due to the conditions," Leader Berg began, "On top of that, most young adults choose to go into academia due to Uxie's influence, so our trainer classes are typically smaller than average for Sinnoh. All that to say, I don't have a lot of Tier One challenges. In fact, the last one I received was two years ago. By the time you showed up with your starter, all of your classmates had left Snowpoint. And when you didn't make your challenge by the end of summer, I assumed that you had as well."

They passed the first basement level and continued further down. "I actually spent that last month of summer north of the city with Cal Sullivan. You battled him pretty much right after we got back," he explained.

The gym leader's eyes unfocused and his voice was wistful as he mused, "Ah yes, I remember Trainer Sullivan. What a show of skill and passion. I should have requested a change in terms the moment he beat my mamoswine to truly challenge him." Berg shook his head as if clearing his wandering thoughts. He continued, more focused, "I wasn't aware that you knew Mr. Sullivan; you should be glad to have a friend like him. I'm curious though. If Mr. Sullivan challenged me so quickly, then what delayed you?"

"We got attacked by a boogle of weavile and sneasel. I wanted to wait until I felt healthy enough to travel after my challenge. And Cal gifted me a pokemon that I wanted to spend some time training and bonding with," Daniel answered as they came to the third level down. Here, the gym leader led them down a hall and to the second door with ' **GYM 5** ' written on it.

"I would love to hear that story some day. To walk away from an attack like that is quite fortunate," the leader said, though he didn't push for the story. Instead, he opened the door to the gym and motioned Daniel inside.

The gym was a massive room, large enough for Daniel to wonder how it was even built so far underground. Large, steel I-beam columns supported the ceiling above every thirty or so feet. Artificial snowmakers were placed at every corner, creating a constant flurry of snow in the room. At the back of the room was a large obstacle course that looked much more complex than anything Daniel created for his starter. He thought it even had tunnels in areas. Another area of the room had gymnastic equipment such as bars, balance beams, and trampolines. Daniel also noticed a small video room tucked into a corner and multiple cameras placed throughout the gym.

"Whoa," Daniel breathed out.

"Incredible, isn't it? I had this built for Everest, my sandslash, so he could train my younger shrews. Now, release your starter."

Daniel obeyed and let Drift out of his ball. The sandshrew looked around the room in wonder, much like Daniel had moments earlier. "Drift," he said, gaining the attention of his starter, "This is Gym Leader Berg. I'm not sure if you remember him, but you've met him before." Drift grunted and threw a mound of snow at him as if the pokemon was insulted.

The gym leader then released his own pokemon. A large, light blue sandslash coalesced beside the leader. Alolan sandslash, though taller than their desert cousins, still only typically grew to about four feet tall. The one before Daniel looked closer to five feet with it's icy spikes reaching even higher. It had two deadly looking claws extending over a foot long from each hand with small curves at the end to act as ice picks. The already chilly air got even colder at the pokemon's appearance.

Drift jumped in surprise at the appearance of the sandslash and stood defiantly in front of Daniel. The elder sandslash merely clicked its claws together and stretched.

"This is Everest," Leader Berg said, "He is my elite sandslash and has been a wonderful friend and pokemon to me for years."

"How is he so big?"

"The bond between trainer and pokemon is a wonderful thing, Daniel. It brings out the best in us both. I'm certain you will understand one day."

"I suppose you're not planning on telling me how Drift evolves," Daniel joked, though he couldn't deny the small spark of hope he felt in his heart that the leader would actually answer. Even Drift looked at the leader hopefully at the question, losing some of his protectiveness in the process.

"No, I am not," the leader chuckled, "That is for you to find out, as I told you before. No, I want Everest to test your starter to see how he is doing. Everest, if you would?" The sandslash gave a grunt to Drift and motioned Daniel's starter to follow. Drift took a step forward before looking back at Daniel. At his nod, the sandshrew followed the elite pokemon to the obstacle course on the farside of the room.

"You can tell a lot about a trainer by looking at his pokemon," Leader Berg mused, "Your sandshrew is both loyal and protective of you. That speaks volumes to me, Daniel."

"Thank you, sir," Daniel responded respectfully. "Leader Berg, with all due respect, why did you have your staff waiting for me?" The question had been bouncing around in his head the entire conversation. He was a rookie trainer with no badges; there was no reason for a gym leader to take any interest in him.

"Ice type pokemon are the rarest type of pokemon, both in number of species but also in what areas they can survive. Not only that, most ice types require some special method to evolve rather than just age or strength like most other types. Of the known ice types, sandslash is the second rarest, only topped by the elusive froslass, which I still can't manage to figure out how to evolve a snorunt into," the leader paused, giving frustrated huff before continuing, "So not only were you the only person in you graduating class that did not come to me requesting a starter, you managed to catch a rare ice type, that's extremely difficult to evolve.

"You break the mold, Daniel," Leader Berg continued, "You stood out from your peers. You defied logic and chose a starter you would struggle to evolve. That was enough to interest me. Now I know I wasn't wrong. You have dedicated far more time than an average trainer to working with your team prior to your first gym challenge. You chose, unlike your peers, to challenge me first. And you have hinted at plans to travel during a Snowpoint winter, which I doubt any single badge trainer has attempted in the last few years."

Daniel did not respond, choosing to watch his starter run through the obstacle course while he contemplated what the leader said. Everest, Leader Berg's sandslash, seemed to move easily through the obstacle course. Daniel noted that the elder pokemon was able to move individual spikes on its back, though they were formed from steel and ice, to fit through small spaces. Drift, on the other hand, struggled through the obstacle course. It was clearly at a higher difficulty level than anything he completed before. Still, Daniel proudly watched as his starter finished the course and immediately ran to the beginning to try again. The sandslash pulled Drift away from the course after another time through and led him in a series of stretches, which Drift had little problem with.

"He's flexible," Berg finally said, breaking the silence. "You've done well in that."

Daniel nodded, pride welling in his chest at the compliment, "I caught a meditite, so we do a lot of yoga." The gym leader laughed at the comment.

After the stretches, the two shrew pokemon ran a few short sprints, where Drift was horribly outpaced. Then, Berg tested the sandshrew's strength through some resistance bands and weight lifts, which Daniel's starter struggled to complete. "He is weaker than I expected him to be," the leader commented as the shrews went to drink some water from a fountain near the trainers. "But, he's much more flexible, and about as fast as I thought he would be. There is certainly room for improvement, but you've done well, Daniel."

Daniel thanked the leader as he bent down to scratch Drift's belly. The sandshrew squirmed in pleasure at the attention. "You did good bud," Daniel murmured to his starter. Drift blew a couple snowflakes at him in response.

"Arnold, please meet us in the arena. You have a Tier One prelim."

Daniel whipped his head in surprise from his starter back to the gym leader who was putting away his dex. "Excuse me?" he asked of the leader.

Gym leader Berg looked down on him with a mischievous grin and said, "You _were_ planning to schedule a challenge today, correct?"

"Well, yes. But I didn't think I would battle today!"

"Do you think an extra day of preparation will change the outcome of your battle?"

"No, but-"

"Do you have the challenge fee?"

"Yes, but-"

"Are your pokemon ready to compete?"

Daniel looked at his starter who stared back at him with a cold, steely determination. The sandshrew nodded and got to his feet. "We're ready, sir."

"Then let's go, Trainer Pugh."

Blood rushed through Daniel's veins with each frantic beat of his heart as they made their way to the arena. This would be his first battle against another trainer. Was he ready? Was Drift? Of course he would be using the sandshrew. A knot formed in Daniel's stomach anytime he considered not using his starter for such a momentous occasion. "Are you ready, Drift?" he asked his starter quietly just before they entered the arena. He got a grunt and a dusting of snowflakes in response. "Okay, let's do this then." He returned his starter and entered the arena.

The arena, like the rest of the gym, was much emptier than Daniel remembered. A few gym trainers who had heard about the battle milled in the stands, chatting amongst themselves, though that was it. The battle field itself was covered in snow, with a pair of small pools on either side. The gym trainer who would be battling him, Arnold, stood on the Gym's side of the arena. Daniel moved to the challenger's side as Leader Berg moved to referee the match.

"This is a Tier One preliminary challenge battle between Trainer Daniel Pugh and Snowpoint City Gym," the leader called out once he was in the referee stand, "This battle will be a one on one battle with no switches or items. Does each side understand?" When both Daniel and his opponent gave their consent, Leader Berg continued, "Trainers, pick your pokemon! On my mark, release them!"

Daniel firmly held Drift's luxury ball forward as he watched Arnold mirror him with a red pokeball. This was a ritual of sorts for battles. A show of honesty and equality between trainers. At the start of every battle, and in the case of a draw in the middle of a battle, each trainer would choose their pokemon and release them at the same time. The tradition started so one trainer wouldn't have an advantage over the other, though now it was more ritualistic than anything. Leader Berg called for the battle to begin.

Excitement flooded Daniel's being as he released Drift onto the arena. Fittingly, his opponent released the ice type variant of vulpix that was originally discovered in Alola like the ice type sandshrew. The ice fox was slightly shorter than Drift, and much more lithe. "Metal Claw!" he called out to his starter as soon as he registered the opposing pokemon. Drift charged the vulpix and made to slash it with a glowing claw. At the pinnacle of the sandshrew's arm path, the vulpix dodged to the left, completely avoiding the attack.

"Again!" Twice more the vulpix dodged out of the way. It then hit Drift with a powder snow, which the sandshrew shook off with ease. The vulpine pokemon was too quick for an attack like metal claw, which had a small contact area. When he was too slow to dodge, Drift was slammed in the stomach with a strong headbutt.

Daniel called out, "Powder snow. Follow it!" It was the same technique that they used to tackle Sasha when catching the meditite.

Drift straightened from where he had bent over after the headbutt and pushed a wave of snow towards his opponent. The vulpix wasn't able to jump out of the way of the snow and it was slowed down just enough so that Drift tackled it to the ground, using his weight to hold the pokemon down. "Metal fury!" Daniel watched as both of Drift's sharp nails gleamed with power before the sandshrew furiously slashed at the vulpix.

The super effective attack had the vulpix yelping in pain as blood and blue fur were strewn across the arena. After a couple seconds of the assault, Arnold returned his pokemon, forfeiting the match. Drift fell a couple inches to the ground. The sandshrew stood proudly, droplets of blood falling from his claws.

"The challenger is the winner!" Leader Berg called out. The leader, along with the gym trainers in the stands, politely applauded as Daniel ran onto the arena field to congratulate his starter.

"Drift, that was amazing!" he called out. His sandshrew turned towards him and blew snowflakes in excitement. Once Daniel reached his pokemon, he knelt down to give him a few proud scratches on his belly, despite the vulpix's blood staining his fur.

"Well done, Daniel," Leader Berg said as he and the gym trainer, Arnold walked up to him. His opponent repeated the sentiment with a congratulatory nod.

"Thank you, sir. And thank you for the battle," he responded.

"When you leave," the leader said, "Stop by the front desk. You'll need to pay the challenge fee. I know things were done a little out of order, but that still needs to be done before we can battle. And tell Beth to schedule you for noon the day after tomorrow."

* * *

The following day, Daniel spent time resting and relaxing with his team at the pokemon center. Kai, his magby, did not enjoy the snow, which made anywhere outside troublesome. And Drift was not allowed inside his house per his mother's orders in order to protect her hardwood floors.

Resting and relaxing, funnily enough, meant something different to each of his pokemon. Drift spent his time alternating between creating mounds of snow to jump in and curling up beside Daniel for physical attention. Sasha spent the whole day meditating. Daniel thought he even saw her body raise an inch of the ground at one point. Though when he looked back in surprise, she was firmly on the ground. Kai insisted on watching battles, though Daniel forbade him from training. He did take some time, whenever Drift left him to entertain himself, to sit by the magby and talk through the strategy of the battle currently playing.

It was in that time that he spent with his fire type that Daniel finally decided on a strategy for his challenge the following day. From all the replays he watched of Leader Berg, it seemed like he only led with a water type when he knew that opponent had a fire type pokemon. Cal had said the same of the gym leader after his battle. So Daniel decided the plan would be to lead with Kai, as Berg was unaware of the fire type, only that he had three pokemon. He hoped that the gym leader would start with a pure ice type, which would give Kai a leg up on the competition. If he was wrong, then he still had Sasha and Drift to finish up the battle.

"So here's the plan for tomorrow," he told his pokemon as they were preparing to leave the pokemon center. "Kai, you're going to start us off. Berg likes to lead with a part water type if he knows the opponent has a fire type pokemon, but he doesn't know about you. Sasha, you'll come in next. I know you've battled wild pokemon before, but I want to get you some experience in a trainer battle too. This will be a good opportunity for that. Drift, you'll be cleaning up. We only have to beat two pokemon, and all of you have a type advantage."

His sandshrew immediately grunted and butted his head against Daniel's knee. That same determination from their preliminary battle burned in his starter's eyes. "I know you want to battle, bud. But Kai and Sasha need to get some experience too. We're a team. We have to help each other grow and they need this experience to grow." The sandshrew was still clearly unhappy, but he consented.

" _And if our adversary leads with one of the water?"_ Sasha's voice echoed in his mind. Based on the curious glances from his other two pokemon, Daniel knew she had broadcast the question to the group.

"Kai will at least be able to compete with a water type," he answered, "It's not ideal, but I believe Kai can do it." He intentionally did not address the scenario where his magby would lose, however likely it was, as he didn't want to convey anything but trust in his pokemon's abilities. "It's a three on two battle, so we should be able to do this without a problem. We've trained for this."

* * *

His stomach forgot his confidence from the night before as he arrived at the gym the day of his battle. He made his way to the restrooms before checking in and proceeded to lose his breakfast. The nervous sickness surprised him. He remembered being sick prior to his first volleyball tournament, but had handled pressure well after that. Hopefully, the same would be the case with training and battling. Once he got the first gym battle under his belt, things wouldn't be so dramatic.

As it was over a month into winter, there were no other challengers. That meant the arena was once again empty aside from gym trainers, his parents, and a class from the university. Daniel guessed they were there to study ice type pokemon as battle strategy wasn't a subject taught at Snowpoint University. The lack of other challengers meant that Daniel had no wait before his battle began.

At noon sharp, he stepped out onto the challenger's platform, which was raised a few feet off the ground. Leader Berg stepped out a moment later on the opposite side. There was no announcer, just the referee who called out the challenge and the rules. "Trainer Daniel Pugh is challenging Snowpoint City Gym in a Tier One Gym Challenge. The challenger is allowed three pokemon to defeat Gym Leader Andri Berg's two. No items or switching is allowed. Do both sides understand?" Daniel and Berg both nodded, and the referee continued, "Trainers, select your pokemon and wait for my mark!"

Daniel pulled Kai's ball from his bandolier as Berg selected his own red pokeball from his belt. After a second, the referee called, "Begin!"

His burnt red fire duck coalesced on his side of the arena, immediately ready for battle. Opposite of the magby, a blue and tan ball like pokemon appeared. A spheal, quite literally the only pokemon he did not want to see against Kai. Daniel searched for his opponent's eyes and found them smirking back at him. "How'd you know?" he called out to the gym leader.

"Educated guess," he called back across the arena, "A Sullivan gave you a pokemon. Good chance it was a fire type."

"Fair enough. Kai, ember!" The magby jumped into action and shot a burning coal at the seel pokemon. It landed, but did much less damage than Daniel thought it would. He heard his opponent order for a water gun and Daniel responded with, "Dodge! Make sure you stay out of the way of those water attacks."

His magby had enough battle instinct that the order wasn't needed. Kai was already jumping away from the bullet of water. He came up firing another ember for the same result as the first. "Smog, fire's not working!"

Kai leaped out of the way of another water gun and coughed up a noxious purple cloud that settled around the spheal. The moments he needed to use the move, however, was all his opponent needed to land a water gun. Fortunately, he had a few seconds to shake off the hit as the round pokemon began coughing on the poisonous fumes. Leader Berg quickly ordered the spheal to use icy wind to disperse the smog.

"Headbutt, then fire punch!" Daniel called out. The fire type charged at his opponent. Just before he lowered his head, the water type hit him with another water gun. Kai still had enough momentum to power through and hit the spheal. The headbutt was weaker than intended, but still did damage. The proceeding fire punch did even less damage. The magby finally went down to another close range water gun.

Daniel returned his pokemon, frustrated at the loss. Still, the spheal was weak, evidenced by the black scorch marks all over its body and the labored breathing. Daniel also thought he saw a tinge of purple entering its eyes. "Sasha, confusion!" he called out immediately upon releasing his meditite. The bipedal pokemon's eyes glowed blue for a brief second before the spheal grunted in pain and was sent rolling backwards.

Berg returned it before it came to a stop and released his final pokemon. It was a light blue, fluffy pokemon that constantly bounced from one foot to the other. It had two ice shards on its stomach that matched its icy eyebrows. It was an ice type darumaka.

"Meditate, teleport away if it gets close," Daniel ordered, fearing the amount of damage the darumaka could dish out. Meditation, they discovered, could strengthen Sasha's attack for a short period of time. They both hypothesized that it was due to the increased connection to her body that meditation provided.

The darumaka curled itself into an icy ball and rolled quickly towards Sasha. She teleported away without any trouble. The ice type fuzzball angrily shook a finger at the meditite once it stopped rolling, upset that it missed its attack.

" _Daniel!"_ Sasha's voice was panicked, " _My adversary has prevented me from teleportation!"_

"Force palm," he responded. She did as ordered and got in close to the darumaka. As she thrust her palm forward, the darumaka did a quick spin with a clap. A large block of ice rose up behind Sasha. She hit the ice type, sending hit flying and the block of ice crumbled like an avalanche on top of her.

Sasha cried out in pain, pulling at Daniel's heartstrings. Still, she was able to crawl out from the icy rubble before the darumaka could recover. "Confusion, keep your distance." The darumaka gave a squeak as it was sent spiralling even further backwards. Sasha used confusion again before breaking the taunt. She teleported directly to the darumaka and hit it with another force palm.

Daniel's opponent did not return his pokemon, but he did hold up his hand requesting a pause. Daniel acquiesced, calling out to his pokemon, "Sasha, hold!"

"You are clearly worthy of your first badge," Berg began, "What do you say to an extra challenge?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"A one on one. Your starter against one more of my pokemon. If you lose, you still have earned your badge. I wish to truly test your sandshrew."

Daniel felt his eyes tighten imperceptibly. After a moment, he asked, "What about if I win?"

He watched as the gym leader's entire persona shifted. It was almost as if the gym leader knew the question was coming, and knew that he had Daniel right where he wanted. "If you win," he paused, with a wide grin as if he was soaking in the dramatic build up, "I'll tell you how to evolve him."

* * *

 **Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges**  
Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
Meditite - Sasha  
Magby - Kai

**AN: So we see Daniel's first battle and first gym challenge. Let me know what you think! Leave a review with your thoughts!**


	7. Steps from Snowpoint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 0 Badges  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai

Chapter 7: Steps from Snowpoint

The leader was offering to tell him how to evolve his starter. There was no question who Berg was referring to. And Daniel realized that there was no way he could turn up the opportunity. He almost sent Drift out immediately, though he held himself back. "I thought you said evolution was the mark of a good trainer," he called out defiantly, hoping to not seem so desperate to comply.

Berg gave a deep, rolling laugh. "So I did, so I did. I'm glad you were listening. Will you take the challenge though?"

Daniel ground his teeth together. Finally he returned his meditite and released his starter onto the field. From his body language, Drift was excited to find himself in the arena and ready to battle. The gym leader's grin stretched across his face as he replaced the darumaka with a large swinub.

The pig immediately shot a glob of mud at Drift, who curled into a ball to allow the mud to splash off his icy shell. "Powder snow! Follow it with a tackle!" The wave of snow did contact the swinub, but it had already dug itself into the ground before Drift could land the tackle. The sandshrew looked around in confusion before he was thrown into the air. He landed in a heap a couple feet away and was immediately hit in the face with a glob of mud.

As Drift tried to clear his eyes, Daniel noticed the swinub bury underground. "On your back!" he called out. His starter obeyed without hesitation, but continued to clean his eyes of mud. The swinub again came up from beneath Drift. This time, the sandshrew landed cleanly on his feet and the swinub was left dazed from hitting the hard, icy shell.

"Tackle! Metal fury!" Drift took advantage of the disoriented swine and tackled it. He then rained a barrage of metal claws down on the ice type. It only lasted for a couple moments before the swinub managed to kick Drift to the ground. The swinub charged forward, hitting the sandshrew in the stomach with a strong headbutt.

"Metal claw!" Daniel ordered, hoping his starter could land the attack before the pig could get away. As the swinub dug underground once more, Drift did catch its back with a glancing metal claw.

Instead of ordering his starter to stay on his back, Daniel tried to switch things up before the swinub took advantage of the prior strategy. "Ice ball, don't let it hit you!" His sandshrew tucked itself into a ball and began to roll forward, slowly gaining speed as snow and ice hardened around him.

After several seconds, the swinub exploded from the ground just behind Drift. Drift quickly changed directions and slammed into the pig pokemon with a spray of ice and snow. "Metal fury!" The sandshrew again slashed at the swinub. Blood flung from Drift's claws with each swipe.

"Magnitude!" It was the first order that Daniel comprehended from the gym leader. All his previous orders went in one ear and out the other as Daniel focused on the battle. He watched as the swinub kicked Drift off of itself, rear up on its hind legs and slam itself onto the arena ground. The earth shook violently. As the shaking stopped, Drift fell unconscious, the super effective attack being too much for his starter. A couple seconds later, the swinub collapsed too, though the battle was already over. They had lost.

* * *

Thirty minutes later found Daniel sitting despondently in an antechamber waiting on the gym leader or gym trainer to award him his prize money and badge. The prize money felt like a twist of the knife. He had lost. Regardless of the leader saying he would still receive the badge, he still lost the battle.

"Well done, Trainer Pugh!" Leader Berg exclaimed as he entered the room. "Well done indeed. It has been quite sometime since I enjoyed a tier one match like that."

Daniel couldn't bring himself to respond. His mood seemed to be missed by the older man, however, as the leader continued, "Your prize money is being wired to you now. It is the typical amount of your challenge fee and a half. And here is your Icicle Badge."

He wordlessly accepted the small badge. The badge was a translucent, light blue gem shaped into two mountains. He fiddled with the trinket. He would need to put it into a badge case later, but it would also be registered to his trainer ID.

"That badge is a symbol that you have beaten the Snowpoint City Gym. Once you have all eight badges in Sinnoh, you will be eligible to compete in the Lily of the Valley Tournament and challenge the Elite Four. In addition to the badge, may I present you with this TM. It is a one use TM for the move ice shard. Ice shard is a fast ice type move that most often takes the form of your pokemon throwing a blade of ice at the opponent, though that changes depending on the pokemon."

Daniel took the small disk. He could link a pokeball to his dex and insert the TM into the dex to give his pokemon an immediate understanding of the move. He would need to train his pokemon in order to truly master the attack, however. Most known moves had associated TMs, with a few rare outliers. Trainers could also buy infinite use TMs, though they were incredibly expensive.

"You know," the leader said rather sharply, "Most trainers are much more pleasant after winning their badge."

For the first time since Berg entered the room, Daniel met the older trainer's eyes. There was a cold anger in the leader's eyes at being ignored. "What's the point?" Daniel scoffed, "I lost. Why do I deserve any of this when my starter can't even beat a tier one pokemon?!"

He watched as his elder's anger drained away to be replaced with mirth. "Daniel, do you honestly think that I would challenge your starter with a tier one pokemon?" He gave his signature rolling laugh. "Daniel, I use that swinub in tier two battles. When I said I wanted to challenge you, I meant it. Drift would likely have had little trouble rolling through the tier one challenge on his own."

"You mean-"

"Yes. Not only did you earn your badge, you also almost defeated a gym pokemon a tier higher than you should be competing at. Be proud of yourself and be proud of your team."

"Thank you, Leader Berg," he said as he felt his heart lift. He examined the badge in his hand with a touch more awe than before. It now was not a symbol of his failure, but rather a true sign of his success.

"You did lose the extra challenge, though. So I'm afraid you'll have to figure out the key to evolving your starter by yourself," the leader said with a nod. "Your sandshrew did push my swinub to the point of exhaustion though, so I will give you this. Return here next year in November if you haven't evolved him. Your sandshrew should be capable of evolving by then. If you make the trip, then I will give you a hint."

Daniel nodded fervently, "Of course, sir!"

The leader extended his hand, which Daniel eagerly took. Berg's hand was firm but curiously cold. "You have potential, Daniel. Don't let me down. And do be safe traveling south through the winter."

"Thank you, Leader Berg. Truly," Daniel responded before leaving the chamber and the gym.

Several hours later at the pokemon center, Daniel learned the very important lesson of not releasing all of his pokemon at once following a battle.

Drift immediately began sulking. While he wasn't breaking anything or throwing a tantrum, it was clear that he was internally beating himself up from losing his battle. Daniel realized that he was unable to inform his starter of the additional challenge at the gym, so Drift likely felt like he lost them the entire gym battle. Daniel felt his heart go out to his sandshrew, knowing he had been in a similar state of depression hours earlier.

On the other end of the spectrum, Kai was rampaging. The fire type was furious that he didn't win and came out of his pokeball raging. Boxes were burnt and destroyed. Dummies were shredded. Daniel even caught an ember on his leg in the crossfire, though it wasn't a direct hit.

At least Sasha was keeping a level head. Though she was the only one aware that they won the badge, so that made sense.

"Kai! Enough!" Daniel finally yelled after multiple, calmer attempts to calm down the magby. The sharp tone of his voice was enough to halt the fire type's path of destruction and to get his sandshrew's attention. "It is not your fault that you lost. Spheal was the only pokemon that truly had you beat. They have a type advantage and are known to specifically resist fire type attacks due to their blubber. You lost because I guessed wrong."

Daniel turned to his starter before the sandshrew could begin moping again, "And Drift, that was a tier two swinub and a part of a separate challenge the gym leader made to see how you fared in battle. I'm sorry that I didn't get the chance to explain beforehand. You did amazing and almost beat it. In fact, it fainted moments after you did. Be proud of yourself."

" _So you were not victorious in the supplemental trial?"_ Sasha asked.

"No, we weren't," he responded, "Drift was very close to winning, though. If we won, Berg would have told us how to evolve you, bud. He was still impressed enough that in a year from now, he'll give us a hint."

Drift, while still obviously upset about his loss, seemed to perk up some. Kai, however, turned away with a snort of fire. "Kai, cut it out," the fire type just glared back in response. "If it makes you feel better, we'll work more on your thunder punch so you don't have to worry as much about water types." That seemed to appease the magby for the time being.

"Okay. So it's September ninth now," he said to his team, "The plan is to leave within a week. Days are about to start getting shorter and storms are already becoming more frequent. I want to leave and start heading south as soon as possible. But I want everyone rested before we go because it'll be a long trip. We will have light training sessions but our goal is to rest and prepare for a hard journey."

Daniel turned to his meditite and said, "Sasha, I want you to work on teleporting with me. We'll start tomorrow and see how far you can teleport with me and then work on increasing that distance. I want to be prepared in case something goes really wrong. Sound good?" His team consented and they spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the center.

The next day he began testing Sasha's teleporting capabilities. They did this by walking out of the city and having her attempt to teleport back to his house. The farthest she was capable of by herself was about a mile and a half, though she was able to do four consecutive jumps if she shortened the distance to a mile.

Kai and Drift both took turns being teleported by Sasha as well, when they weren't working on developing thunder punch and ice shard respectively. She was able to teleport Kai farther than his starter due to the magby being significantly smaller. When it was time for Sasha to test with him, they found she was only able to teleport a quarter of a mile away, though she could keep that distance up for three jumps before exhausting herself.

In the following days leading up to their departure, Sasha was unable to increase the distance of her jumps, though her stamina did get better. Daniel considered it a win and made a note to continue working on that when they stopped traveling. He didn't want to exhaust his meditite by continually training the skill only to need it whilst moving south.

During that time, Daniel did receive a text from Cal. It read, ' _Saw your match against Berg. What gives?! He just forfeited? That darumaka could still fight. Either way, congrats Danny! Looks like you're doing good with Kai so far too.'_

Daniel responded with a long explanation of the extra challenge Berg issued, which apparently didn't make it onto the official league replay. He related the stakes for the battle and his eventual loss as well as the opportunity to return for a hint. He also made sure to ask his friend how he was and what his plans were.

Cal returned quickly with, ' _That makes a lot more sense than Berg forfeiting. Sucks you couldn't pull out a win, but going toe to toe with a tier two is great! I'm hoping to finish up with PT for my knee in a month or so then follow a couple leads about Magneto's evolution. Thinking I might make it to Eterna in 3-4 months. Maybe we'll meet up there if you're heading there next!'_

The possibility of reconnecting with his friend cemented his decision to go to Eterna first over Veilstone or Hearthome.

The only other thing of note that occurred before they left was an argument with Daniel's parents. They were not pleased that he was planning to travel during the harsh Snowpoint winter. Daniel was equally stubborn in his refusal to spend the winter in Snowpoint or to take the easy way and hire a psychic to teleport him to another city.

Their concern was well-founded. The weather was brutally cold with frequent blizzards that could bring in several feet of snow and blow trees over with ease. On top of that, pokemon that typically lived in the mountains or further north would migrate south as the temperatures dropped. Groups of sneasel and weavile would be more common in the forests surrounding the route. Abomasnow would likely be roaming the open plains. So trainers had to decide which of the threatening pokemon they would rather deal with by choosing to either travel in the plains or in the forest. While there were no enforced restrictions on traveling Route 217 during winter, it was highly discouraged by the Ranger Corp. and the League for anyone.

Daniel and his parents didn't actually resolve the difference of opinion. His father stormed off one night, muttering that Daniel was being stupid. He shrugged to his mom before heading to his room. The two days that followed before he left were spent in an uncomfortable tension.

The day before he left, he dropped his pokemon off at the center for a last minute check up before going to the trainer outpost. He stocked up on food for himself and his team, as well as generic pokemon kibble in case he caught something. Daniel made sure he grabbed multiple potions and status healers as well as some more pokeballs. He sunk the last of his available cash into storage balls. He figured that several months traveling south and hunting would result in a lot of parts he could sell in Eterna. He hoped that would recoup the losses of preparing for his journey.

* * *

Daniel, bundled in a thick, swanna-down winter jacket, eyed the snowy path in front of him. Drift stood confidently beside him though Sasha and Kai were in their pokeballs. The southern expanse of Route 217 was daunting. It would take him months to traverse it south to Eterna. He glanced east, towards Lake Acuity. It was where his whole journey began; it was where he caught Drift.

He took a step south, but found himself being drawn back to the east. He originally went to the lake to catch a piplup, though a spheal would have made a decent back up. The small penguins would grow up into fearsome empoleon. Even after catching Drift, he had planned to befriend one for his second pokemon, though that was derailed by meeting Cal. It would be his last opportunity to catch one in the wild until he came back next winter.

"We have one more thing to do here, Drift," he said to his starter as he made up his mind and turned east.

Catching a piplup would give him four pokemon, which was the legal limit for a trainer with less than two badges. That would restrict him from using any pokemon he caught on his journey until after he won his gym challenge in Eterna. He would have to designate any pokemon he caught for storage, which would lock the ball unless the status was changed at a pokemon center. But the appeal of having an empoleon was too great.

The Sinnoh League had team size rules in place to protect both pokemon and trainers. The limit of four pokemon for trainers with less than two badges was to allow for rookie trainers to acclimate to caring for pokemon on a smaller scale. Once they had two badges, they could keep a full battle party of six. The next milestone was at four badges where trainers were seen as proficient enough to have pokemon out in public spaces without endangering civilians.

Once a trainer had six badges under his belt, he could keep up to eight pokemon on him. After earning all eight badges, they could have ten pokemon. While a trainer could only use six pokemon in a battle, this increase allowed for higher level trainers to keep a full battle party in the event of a death.

It took half an hour for him to reach the ranger outpost at the lake, where he asked an on duty ranger for Ranger Smith, the one who witnessed Daniel catching his starter. After a couple minutes, the familiar official exited the outpost.

"Trainer Pugh. Nice ta see ya," the ranger said in his familiar draw, "Johnson said yeh wanted to see me."

"Yes sir," Daniel said, gulping down his nerves, "I want to catch a piplup."

The ranger stared at him questioningly for a moment before saying, "Yeh know the rules. Take yer time and befriend one and we won't have any problems."

He almost snorted. Lake Acuity was holy ground which meant that trainers were not allowed to battle around the lake. It also meant that catching wild pokemon was frowned upon, though not specifically illegal. Trainers who caught pokemon around the lake were only disciplined if civilians were hurt or the rangers had to be called in to stop a rampage.

Rather than make a disrespectful comment, Daniel shook his head and said, "No sir. I don't intend on waiting a couple weeks to convince one to join me. I'm planning on catching one today. I'm telling you ahead of time so you're aware and ready just in case."

"Let me get this straight, Pugh. You are telling me, a ranger, that you are intentionally going to battle on sacred ground, which is against the law. Did I get that right?" The ranger replaced his accent with a severity that surprised Daniel.

Daniel steeled his resolve, "I am not planning on battling on sacred ground. If everything goes according to plan, I'll catch my piplup far from the shoreline without ever causing a problem."

The normally friendly ranger glared at him hard for a minute. Finally he poked Daniel hard in the chest saying, "If I see an empoleon within a mile of this outpost, I'm arresting you."

Daniel nodded in response. When the ranger went back inside, he let out a massive sigh before making his way to the lake, a plan already forming in his head. It didn't take long to find the mixed group of seals and penguins, though it was another half an hour walk around the lake. He settled himself about fifty yards away and pulled out his pokedex to look up the small water type.

_Piplup, the Penguin Pokemon._

_Piplup are a pure water type pokemon. These penguins live exclusively around arctic seas and saltwater lakes. Piplup are mostly light blue with a darker head and back with two white spots on their chest. This coloration allows for them to blend into the deep waters when viewed from above and blend into the clearer skies when viewed from below. This camouflage not only allows them to hunt more effectively, but also helps in evading predators such as sharpedo and saltwater feraligatr. The diet of these pokemon, along with their evolved forms, consists exclusively of fish. Piplup will band together with others to hunt large groups of fish._

_Despite being very prideful pokemon, piplup seem to manage living in large herds. These herds are typically headed by a small council of empoleon which make decisions for the colony and provide protection._

_Piplup seem to evolve into prinplup when they hit a certain level of strength and personal pride. This level varies for each penguin and also depends on the strength of the group they are in. As piplup get closer to evolution, they start to move to the outskirts of their group, believing that they don't need the safety of the group. When they evolve, the new prinplup will often venture away from the colony alone. Prinplup follow this same evolution pattern, though it is hypothesized that they will only evolve when they have the maturity to lead a colony._

Daniel skimmed through the rest of the entry before deciding there was nothing else helpful for determining which piplup to choose. He released Sasha from her ball and told her, "Sasha, we're going to catch one of these piplup, but we need to do it without stirring up the rest of the group. So here's the plan. We're going to walk towards the woods, where we'll be out of sight of the herd. Once we find a good place to battle, I want you to teleport back here, grab one of the piplup on the edge of the group, and then teleport back to us. Can you do it?"

" _Of course,"_ she replied sassily.

They set off walking away from the group as Daniel thought about his decision. A piplup on the edge of the group would be stronger than its peers. Daniel guessed that it would also be less likely to create a panic in the herd as it was closer to evolution and going off on its own anyways. The downside was that he would likely have a rough time training and bonding with the conceited penguin.

Once they were at a good spot, Daniel released his magby and informed the fire type of what was about to happen. When Kai agreed to fight, Daniel sent Sasha off to get a piplup. Twenty seconds later, she reappeared with a piplup in tow. She immediately teleported to Daniel's side to avoid a point blank water gun that sailed harmlessly to the side.

"Headbutt, then fire punch," Daniel ordered his magby. The fire type lunged forward, ramming his bulbous head into the water type. Before the penguin could react, Kai followed it up with a fiery fist to the side of its head. This pushed the piplup far enough away that it could launch another water gun. Unable to dodge quickly in the snow, Kai was forced to weather the attack.

"Try a thunder punch!" Daniel wasn't sure that Kai could pull it off, but decided to try anyways, believing in his pokemon. He didn't know what caused it, but his magby seemed to stand taller at the order. Kai stepped forward, throwing his weight behind his fist. Right before the punch connected with the penguin, a crackle of electricity surged around the magby's fist. The piplup spazzed for a few seconds as the electricity ran its course before collapsing. Daniel quickly threw a pokeball at the fainted water type and secured his fourth pokemon.

"Awesome job, Kai!" he cheered on his pokemon. The magby puffed his chest out in pride at his accomplishment. Drift seemed excited for his teammate as well, jumping and grunting happily.

Daniel took some time to spray a potion over his magby to help expedite the healing process, before registering the piplup as part of his team. In doing so, he found out the penguin was a male and around four months old. He released the piplup and administered a potion to him as well. While waiting for the piplup to regain consciousness, Daniel took the time to observe the pokemon. It was darker than the typical piplup, with its body being more of a teal color than baby blue and its head almost navy. The typical white around its eyes and on its belly were gray instead. Daniel guessed that it was a little over a foot tall, though it was hard to judge when it was lying down.

When the water type woke up, Daniel said, "You're part of our team now, bud. I'm your trainer and these are your teammates: Drift, Sasha, and Kai. I'm going to call you Slater." The water type clearly didn't understand Daniel's words, but seemed to comprehend his hand gestures to himself and the rest of his team. The penguin stuck its little beak in the air and turned away from Daniel. He just shrugged and returned the penguin.

Once Sasha checked to make sure there were no problems with the main penguin colony, Daniel made his way back to the route. He stopped at the ranger outpost only to tell Ranger Smith that he did not incite a penguin riot before he took his first steps south.

* * *

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 1 Badges  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai  
> Piplup - Slater
> 
> AN: So here's the 7th chapter. It's a bit shorter than normal, but we get to see the end of Daniel's battle with Berg and him leaving Snowpoint as well as him catching his fourth pokemon, a piplup. A huge shout out to Silder, who constantly helps me get the flow of this story right. Definitely go check out his story Restless. Also, just to give credit where it's due, A World of Pokemon (look it up on google, it's a website) has been incredibly helpful to me in creating these pokedex entries and creating this world. Whoever runs that site, you do an amazing job!
> 
> Also, a note on this world in general. Slater, the piplup, is not shiny. I do not know if shinies will be apart of this story, but if they are, it will be clearly denoted as such. I know other authors have done this before, but I think it's completely reasonable for there to be slight differences among species. Animals have small differences (zebras with different pattern strips, big cats with different patterns, birds with variations in feather tones or arrangement, snakes with slightly different hues), so I think it would be the same in the pokemon world.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Please leave a review letting me know what you thought or things that I could improve on!


	8. Winter Wasteland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 1 Badge  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai  
> Piplup - Slater

Chapter 8: Winter Wasteland

Route 217 was a wide, snowy path that spanned six hundred miles south. The southern end of the route intersected with Route 216, which turned east towards the Coronet Mountains. The passage was framed on either side by dense woodland, with a few smaller trees littering the open expanse.

Daniel chose to walk a short distance from the edge of the forest. He reasoned that it would give him the most flexibility for escaping danger. Abomasnow were too bulky to venture into the tightly packed trees and weavile avoided open plains. Drift and Sasha followed along beside him, having little issue with the snow or cold weather. He left his magby and piplup in their pokeballs for travel though. Kai had problems walking through snow as his high body temperature melted the snow and left him in constant contact with water. Slater was newly caught and prideful enough that Daniel didn't want to deal with the penguin while walking.

He spent five hours trudging through the snow covered route before calling a stop for his first day of travelling south. Based on the sun's position, he only had an hour two of daylight left which would give him time to set up camp and run his team through a training session. He chose a spot just inside the treeline as the trees would provide him some respite from the wind and snow.

Before he started setting up his tent, he released all four of his pokemon, directing them to start warming up for the night's training session. He turned his back to his team and began breaking out his tent. As he did, he heard a rush of water followed by a pained quack. Daniel spun around to find Slater pummeling Kai with water guns.

His other pokemon reacted quickly. Drift tackled the piplup and held the penguin down with a series of angry grunts. Sasha teleported between the magby and the piplup to keep Kai from retaliating. The whole event lasted all of a few seconds, but Kai was left drenched with steam rising off of him.

"What the hell, Slater?!" Daniel exclaimed at the water type. The penguin just glared at him as Daniel's starter let him up from the ground. Though the piplup couldn't understand his words, Daniel was sure that he understood the anger and intent behind them. "That's not okay. We're your family now."

When Slater turned his beak up to Daniel, he addressed his sandshrew, "Run him through drills. Show him he's not number one." The icy shrew gave a resolute nod before grunting at the penguin, forcing the water type forward.

Once he was sure that his starter had his newest team member under control, Daniel knelt down beside his magby. The fire duck still had small vapors of steam wafting off his body and his breath was ragged. Despite the exhaustion and pain the pokemon was in, Kai had a raging fire burning in his eyes. It took Daniel repeating the magby's name multiple times to garner his attention.

"Don't go after him, Kai," he said, "We both know you can beat him. He knows you can beat him. That's why he took the cheap shots." Kai gave another withering glare at the penguin, but nodded obediently.

"Thanks, bud. Take it easy tonight, okay?" He turned from his pokemon and began setting up camp in earnest before having his team work on move development.

The next morning started with a short session of stretches and yoga prior to travelling. And while Slater did not attack anyone, the piplup did refuse to participate until Drift pounded him into the snow a couple times. After the short session, they continued the journey south. Daniel did ask Sasha to keep her mind open to anything worth hunting though. He had enough food for the journey, but it would help his bank if he could save some of that food for later. They traveled for another five hours before stopping to train while there was still daylight.

It was the following day that his meditite sensed something. A quick scouting trip later, she returned with news that there was a single sawsbuck drinking from a river inside the treeline. Daniel unfolded his bow and had Sasha teleport him downwind from the deer, hidden among the trees

The large buck was in its winter form. Its pelt a darker brown with the stomach and breast a crisp, snowy white. The white antlers on its head each sprouted to four, velvety points. Due to the constant cold, all deerling and sawsbuck stayed in their winter form this far north. The ones living in areas with more season diversity would shed their darker coats for something lighter brown and sprout flowers and leaves from their antlers once winter faded.

He had Sasha start to meditate to bolster her attack. While she did so, he laid out his plan in a whisper, "Sasha, when I shoot my first arrow, it's going to try to run whether I hit it or not. So the moment I shoot, teleport in and hit one of its front knees with a force palm, two if you have time. Then get out before you get hurt."

Once his meditite was done with her meditation, Daniel nocked an arrow and took aim at the sawsbuck. With the release of his breath, he let the arrow fly. He missed the sawsbuck's neck, which he was aiming for, though the arrow did connect with the deer's hindquarters. A split second later, Sasha appeared on the far side of the animal and hit its front left knee with a pair of force palms. There was a sharp pop and the knee bent in a sickening way. Sasha teleported away a second later.

Daniel stepped out from the trees as the sawsbuck collapsed to the snowy ground, unable to truly support itself with an arrow on one side and a dislocated knee on the other. Upon seeing him, the deer pokemon charged up a translucent orb of green energy between its antlers. Daniel was forced to dive to the side to avoid the energy ball attack. He quickly drew another arrow and fired before the sawsbuck could charge up another attack. This arrow did connect with the buck's neck and the animal fell still a minute later. Daniel looked behind him to see that the attack had disintegrated a tree behind him, leaving just a stump.

" _The steed almost defeated you,"_ Sasha said telepathically. Daniel couldn't tell if the meditite was concerned or disappointed.

"I got cocky. Sawsbuck aren't known for long range attacks," he responded. While true, Daniel knew that his pokemon made a valid point and he needed to learn from this experience.

Daniel released the rest of his team into the clearing, intending to institute a full day of drills whilst the sawsbuck was cooking. One glance at his new piplup squashed that plan as Daniel had no desire to micromanage the penguin pokemon while trying to cook at the same time. Instead, he decided to set a precedent of taking a more relaxing day anytime that needed to spend a full day hunting and cooking. He pitched the idea to his team and was met with an excited approval from each of his pokemon.

Concerned that Slater would make a break for it in the river, Daniel set a return radius of fifty feet on the piplup's ball before getting to work skinning the sawsbuck. The radius was large enough that the penguin would still get to enjoy the water with some level of freedom. Still, it didn't take long for the pokeball to ding, alerting Daniel that Slater had been returned. The teal penguin was visibly confused when Daniel released him again. It took Slater another couple outings to figure out the radius he was provided. Daniel was pleased that the penguin was able to determine the boundary himself and wasn't upset by it.

Once he didn't have to release Slater every couple minutes, Daniel settled in to take care of the sawsbuck. He took his time skinning the beast, working slowly to preserve as much of the dark brown pelt as possible. He was surprised to note that while the brown fur of the deer was quite coarse, the snowy white areas were surprisingly soft, more akin to a buneary's velvety coat. Daniel also made sure to save the velvety antlers of the buck, as those would likely sell for a decent price like the pelt.

He sat back to observe his team once the meat started cooking over the open flame. Drift had set up away from the heat of the fire. The ice shrew looked to be building a family of snowmen, a hobby Drift had picked up in some down time they had while camping with Cal. Already, the sandshrew had two different snowmen consisting of a few balls of snow stacked atop one another, and he was working meticulously on a third. Daniel held back a chuckle at the serious concentration on his starter's face.

Daniel couldn't see Slater, though there was a small pile of wishiwashi building on the bank of the river. He saw the penguin playing in the water earlier, though he apparently switched to hunting.

Kai had settled down inside the boundary of the fire, wanting to get as close to the heat source as possible. Like Daniel, the magby was silently watching the rest of his teammates with a content, peaceful expression.

"You don't want to train at all, Kai?" Daniel asked of the fire type. Even on the restful days since getting the magby, all the pokemon wanted to do was train.

Kai simply shook his head with a snort and scooted closer to the orange flames.

Checking in on the final member of his team, Daniel found Sasha in a downward dog position a little ways away. Seeing as she wasn't paying attention, Daniel quietly made a snowball before whispering to Kai to pay attention. He lobbed the projectile at his meditite, forcing back laughter even as the snowball was in flight.

It stopped in midair just short of the meditite's behind. Sasha, while holding the pose glared back at Daniel, quickly determining her assailant. With a blink of her eyes, the snowball was sent careening back at him. Daniel scrambled backwards in alarm, but was unable to avoid getting beamed in the face by the shockingly hard frozen missile.

As he wiped the ice and snow from his reddening face, Kai fell to his side in laughter while Sasha adopted a highly satisfied grin. " _Justice is best served cold,"_ she said.

With his pride wounded, Daniel fired back, "The saying is 'revenge is best served cold', not justice." He noted that Slater was now on the bank of the river, watching the exchange curiously beside his pile of minnows.

" _I do not need revenge when I win in the first place,"_ Sasha said with a shrug, finally coming out of her pose.

Daniel was saved from walking into any further blunders by Drift. The ice shrew roared, in an attempt of ferocity, before charging. The sandshrew leapt into the air and came crashing down atop his family of snowmen in an eruption of snow. His starter's mischievous laughter emerged from behind the cloud of snow and sparked a round of laughter from Daniel, Kai, and Sasha as well. The piplup on the riverbank just shrugged and turned away, choosing to enjoy his fishy snack instead.

* * *

Their travel schedule was quickly established in the following days. Daniel would wake his team up as the sun began to rise for a short strength or flexibility training session. They would travel south for around five hours before calling a halt to work on move development before dark.

It was during the second week of travel that his new piplup finally started understanding what Daniel was telling him. The fact that Daniel knew the penguin understood him only made him more frustrated when the water type disobeyed. In addition to the piplup's insubordination, halfway through the second week he attempted to attack Kai once again. Like the first time, Drift and Sasha stopped the attack before too much damage could be done. Daniel had to return the piplup before his magby could retaliate.

"Hey," he started, slowly stroking the fire type's back, "calm down, bud." Daniel wasn't sure if it was smoke or steam rising off the magby. Kai responded with an indignant huff. "He's proud. He wants to be the best but knows that you're better. I know it hurts, but take it as a compliment."

Again, the fire type blew him off. Daniel could see the fire burning in the duck's eyes. He decided to take a different tactic with his magby. "Okay, I'll make you a deal. Don't get back at him this time and if he tries again, you can show him who's boss." The angry inferno in Kai's eyes was replaced by an eager gleam and he gave a nod in agreement. "You're not allowed to hurt him. He's part of the team. But you don't have to take it anymore," Daniel clarified.

The scenario wasn't ideal. Daniel didn't want animosity to grow between his pokemon. At the same time, Kai would grow bitter if this continued and Slater would become a bully without consequences. He hoped that this would provide enough consequences to curb the piplup and give his magby enough room to blow off steam.

With one half of the troublesome duo dealt with, Daniel released Slater to address the penguin. The piplup gave a haughty look towards Kai before Daniel commanded the water type's attention. "This is unacceptable," he began, "You and Kai are teammates. You are brothers." Slater scoffed out a squeak. "Regardless of what you think, that is the truth. I don't know what else to do to stop this behavior, so here it is. If you attack anyone in our family again, there will be retaliation. If you go after Kai, he will respond. Is that clear?"

The penguin brushed his words, so Daniel repeated himself with steely resolve, "Is that clear? If it's not, I'll let Kai go now." Slater glared back at him for a moment before nodding. "Good, now start working on move development. Drift, you're working on ice shard. Sasha, endure and detect. Kai, let's start working towards a better flame wheel so you can develop flame charge later. Slater, bubble. We'll work towards bubblebeam later."

The following days went well considering he had a petulant penguin and it was constantly snowing. Based on where the GPS on his pokedex located him, he was making good progress south. Even taking into account the day he lost to cooking, Daniel figured he was still around a quarter of the way through the route.

At the end of the second week, Slater made his third bid on taking out Kai. Daniel had been expecting it for a couple days and it seemed the rest of his team had as well. As he turned from giving his pokemon their drill instructions, the piplup shot a bullet of water at the magby. By the time Kai started forward to retaliate, Daniel had turned back to watch the event take place.

The fire type lunged forward, dodging another water gun in the process. When he reached the piplup, Kai unleashed a thunder punch with a much stronger and more consistent current arcing across his fist than his first attempt weeks prior. Daniel noticed the penguin give him a startled glance before the hit connected. Slater staggered backwards, though Kai did not pursue him. Once the piplup regained his composure, Slater leaped forward to tackle the magby. Kai sidestepped the attack and responded by blowing hot embers at the penguin. The water type squeaked in pain but didn't retaliate.

The fire and water type pokemon glared at each other for a few long, tense moments before turning away to work on drills. As the fight settled, Drift and Sasha too began their own training. Daniel was proud that Kai had listened to him and not gone overboard in his response to the attack. He also felt a surge of pride that Slater fought back, though he was unable to place why that was.

* * *

The day was fairly sunny, given that winter was taking a firmer hold on the region. The sun was prominent enough that even Kai was able to enjoy the journey outside of his ball. Drift, similar to when Daniel first caught him, was rambunctiously jumping into mounds of snow.

The weather was so nice that when an alarm on Daniel's pokedex started ringing shrilly, he almost muted it in favor of enjoying himself. A glance at what his dex was signifying though had Daniel feeling very appreciative that he didn't silence the alert. Two different alerts were illuminating his pokedex's home screen: 'BLIZZARD WARNING' and 'WINTER STORM WARNING'.

Even seeing the warnings, Daniel almost kept walking.

"Drift, we need to find a snowdrift. One big enough to build a shelter inside of it," he said as the reality of an upcoming blizzard set in, thankful that he had set up a severe weather alert for the trip. Luckily the storm wasn't scheduled to hit until early the next morning, which would give him time to build a snow cave to withstand the blizzard.

The sandshrew gave a determined nod and pressed his short snout to the snow before scrambling off. Daniel snorted, mentally comparing the scene to classic cartoons with a granbull tracking a delcatty. After checking that both Sasha and Kai wanted to remain outside their balls, Daniel and his pokemon set off in pursuit of Drift.

Daniel wasn't sure exactly how Drift did it, but within half an hour, they were standing in front of a large snowdrift on the side of a massive boulder. "Sasha, I need you to teleport to the forest and find a long, strong branch about an inch wide," he waited until his meditite teleported away before turning to address Drift, "Buddy, we need to dig a cave into this snowdrift. Starting from the ground, I need you to tunnel up. I'll help remove as much of the snow as possible."

With a pokemon that was designed to tunnel through ice and snow, the process of digging into the snowdrift was much faster than Daniel remembered from building snow forts with other children in elementary school. The memories were bittersweet. As kids, Daniel and the other kids his age would spend weekends camping in similar snow caves, acting like explorers in the wild. As they got older, the other kids turned to academics, as was typical for kids in Snowpoint City, and snubbed on the more adventurous lifestyle Daniel had fallen in love with.

The tunnel travelled several feet into the snowdrift and was large enough for Daniel to crawl in on his hands and knees. Once the tunnel was done, he directed Drift to excavate a domed cavern at the end of the passage. The floor of the cave would be a step up from the floor of the tunnel to help trap heat in the cave. Additionally, Daniel and Drift shaped two higher benches inside to allow for Daniel and his team to remain even higher above the cold.

Snow caves were incredibly useful in keeping people alive during winter storms in the wilderness if there was enough time to build one. The thick walls of snow were surprisingly insulative against the below freezing temperatures outside. The temperature inside would sit right around freezing due to the snow, but it wouldn't drop below freezing like outside the shelter. Having the cave itself sit far above ground level kept snow from accumulating in the cavern and added another level of heat retention.

At some point, Sasha returned with the branch Daniel requested. He used that to poke multiple holes into the roof of the cave for air supply. He kept the stick in the cave in case the holes filled snow during the blizzard.

Daniel and Drift finished their construction project as snow was just beginning to fall slowly from the gray clouds. Aware that the weather could worsen in an instant, Daniel released his team and made a small fire to enjoy some semblance of warmth before the storm hit. As his team huddled around the flickering flames, Daniel explained what was about to happen.

"Tonight a blizzard is going to hit," he began, "Depending on how long it lasts, we might be stuck in this shelter for days. We have enough food to last for a couple weeks, but we will be cold and trapped inside."

In the light of the oncoming weather, Daniel noted that each of his four pokemon were paying attention. He was surprised to see a look of fierce determination on Slater's round face, as the piplup normally acted like he didn't need any help. That did give him some hope that tempers wouldn't flair too much inside the cave.

He continued with his explanation, "That means we need to be patient with each other. I'm looking at you Kai and Slater. No fighting. If that shelter collapses, we're in trouble. Drift will be able to venture out to check the weather every so often. And we'll keep a candle going to make sure we have enough oxygen.

"This is going to be hard. This will be a test for all of us. When we go into the cave, we're stuck in there. But I know we can pull through. You guys in?"

He received a round of resolute nods from each of his pokemon, though challenging glares were exchanged between Kai and Slater. They enjoyed the fire for a little while longer as the snow increased in intensity. Once the flames stopped producing enough heat to warm all of them, they retreated into the snowy fortress.

* * *

The shelter, while cold, was surprisingly comfortable. With thermal blankets separating the snow's cold from Daniel's body heat and a fire type cuddled into his side, he was relatively warm. Sasha and Slater commandeered the other bench in the cave while Drift was curled up on the ground, preferring the colder ground.

A charmander's tail candle flickered gently on a shelf carved into the wall. The candle was developed for mining expeditions. It was supposed to burn for weeks without going out as long as there was enough oxygen. The candle was designed to go out and give miners about an hour to renew their oxygen source or to escape the shaft. They set up shifts to keep an eye on the fire. Each pokemon knew that if the flame fluttered out, they were to wake Daniel to open up new air holes.

The shelter shielded the group from the wind and the cold. Even with air holes poked into the roof and the entry tunnel, the cave was eerily silent. The thick snow walls drowned out the sound of the wind and weather. Without any indicator of the world outside, Drift ventured out every morning to check if the blizzard had ended as he was the only one able to safely withstand the storm.

The first day was easy, albeit boring. Aside from the tension of the ongoing storm, there were no problems between the group. Kai and Slater clearly avoided each other, but didn't cause any problems. Daniel sent a message to his parents, letting them know he was okay despite the weather and he would call them once the storm abated. The message didn't go out immediately due to connectivity issues, but it would send if the pokedex ever managed to gain service.

The second day the candle went out the first time. Daniel was awake at the time and was able to quickly reopen the air holes.

Day three tensions started to grow. The difficult duo exchanged threatening growls and glares. Sasha snapped at both of them before Daniel could intervene. Their water supply ran out as well. Kai lit a few pieces of charcoal in a pan. They set a pot full of snow atop the coals to melt the snow for more water.

Sasha woke him up on the fourth night once the candle went out. The air holes had iced over, forcing Daniel to poke new holes for ventilation. The following day tempers finally spilled over. Kai snarled at Slater over a perceived slight. The piplup viciously responded with a blast of water soaking both Kai and Daniel.

While Daniel sputtered and shivered, Kai lunged across to the other bench, throwing a fire punch at the water type. It took half a minute before Daniel could recover enough to break the pair apart. "Cut it out!" he yelled, "Both of you!"

He forced Kai to one side of the shelter and stood between the opposing types. As he looked between the two, he noticed the wall of the cavern near the short lived battle had started to melt. "Do you see that?" he exclaimed, pointing at the section of wall. Droplets of water were falling from the top and running down the sides. Both pokemon examined the damage before turning back to him.

"It doesn't look serious now, but what happens when the roof melts through? How long do you think we last when snow is actively falling on us and we're exposed to the wind? Now behave or you're both sitting the rest of this out in your balls."

It was a threat and they both knew it. The pokeball technology, while great at putting pokemon in physical stasis, left the pokemon mentally aware. Because of this, most pokemon didn't enjoy spending large periods of time inside their balls. Daniel had also hoped that maybe the pair would start to get along while stuck in the cave.

Both Kai and Slater gave him contrite looks before turning away from each other. Satisfied that the pair wouldn't compromise their shelter anymore, Daniel stripped out of his drenched clothing down to his underwear and wrapped himself in a blanket to stay warm.

The weather didn't let up for another four days, leaving the team stuck inside the shelter for over a week. Fortunately, Kai and Slater took Daniel's reprimand seriously and didn't cause any more problems, though they did continue to glare at each other whenever they were both awake.

On the ninth day of being trapped inside the snowy cavern, Drift came in grunting happily. The ice shrew excited tugged on Daniel's pant leg before leading him and the rest of the team outside of the shelter.

The sun beamed down on them like a glorious light from heaven. Daniel let out a deep, happy laugh at the warmth shining on his face. Similarly, his pokemon jumped with joy at being out of the shelter. Though they quickly turned away from each other, Daniel saw Kai and Slater share an excited bump against each other.

He felt his pokedex vibrate multiple times as the device reconnected to service towers throughout the region. Alerts coming through about the weather along with multiple messages from his parents and even Leader Berg asking about his well being. He quickly dialed his mother's number and waited for her to pick up.

"Mom, I'm okay."

* * *

The weeks following the blizzard felt like heaven. They had the freedom to move about. The weather was surprisingly good for the days immediately after, though they did suffer through multiple days of constant snowfall.

Daniel kept up the schedule of short mobility training sessions in the morning and attack development in the evenings. Kai and Slater's disputes escalated to nearly once a day. They were short, though passionate. Each time, the magby stood victorious over the piplup, despite having a type disadvantage. Daniel did have to break the pair up a few times when tempers grew too hot. Outside of their fights and bitter glares, the pair did not associate with each other. Daniel wasn't pleased with the animosity between the two, but he had yet to come up with a way to reconcile them.

The weeks saw huge improvement for each of his pokemon. Drift had a good working knowledge of ice shard from the TM Leader Berg gifted him. He was able to form and throw the blade of ice quickly, though not his accuracy still needed work. Daniel's starter was also working towards developing ice punch and strengthening his defense curl to eventually graduate to iron defense.

His meditite was now able to push her fast to eleven days. She still had a long way to go before evolving, but the meditite had pushed her fasting drastically since Daniel caught her. Sasha managed to combine her meditation with an attack to develop power-up punch which would slightly boost her attack while actively attacking her opponents. She was also able to use her psychic subtype to detect oncoming moves and defend against them. They started working on this technique after she protected against Daniel throwing a snowball at her at the beginning of the journey.

Kai, the competitor that he was, was able to perform thunder punch consistently. The magby was also showing improvement on using flame wheel. The move required the fire type to cloak himself in flames and charge an opponent. Daniel hoped to develop the move further into flame charge which could boost his speed, and into flare blitz which was one of the strongest fire type techniques known.

The newest member of the team had the most improvement. The piplup gained enough speed and dexterity to use peck and get away without taking a hit. Slater showed this multiple times in his attempts to dethrone Kai. Slater also progressed his relatively wimpy bubble attack to a threatening bubblebeam.

Daniel felt they were making great progress south. At six weeks, they had traversed nearly two thirds of the snow covered route. Even taking a day every week or so to stop to hunt and rest and factoring in the week and a half delay from the blizzard, they were making great headway through the route.

It was a beautiful day, eerily similar to the day the first blizzard hit. But there was no warning from his pokedex this time. The clouds crept into the sky with deceptive sneakiness. Even as the snow gently began to fall from the sky, Daniel wasn't alarmed.

It took an hour from the first snowflake for the temperature to drop. The precipitation picked up, the wind grew more violent, visibility decreased rapidly. With the sudden shift, Daniel realized how much trouble he was in. "Drift, we need to find shelter now!"

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 1 Badge  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai  
> Piplup - Slater
> 
> AN: Wow. Sorry for the month and a half delay on this. Life hit right at the start and then I just struggled to really get going on this chapter. If this kind of delay happens in the future, I am trying to keep my profile page updated every week or so with the status of the current chapter. 
> 
> I am trying to respond to each review, I'm sorry if I missed you. That said, I have noticed a common desire to flesh out Daniel's team more and some concern that he's catching pokemon too fast. His team is set for at least the next several chapters, for sure, so don't worry too much about that. In that time, I will be focusing on building each of the characters more fully. Just wanted to let you guys know that you are being heard.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. Leave a review and let me know what you thought or ways I can improve.


	10. White Winter Hymnal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 1 Badge  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai  
> Piplup - Slater

Chapter 9: White Winter Hymnal

Cold.

That was the only thought Daniel was capable of making. A violent shiver tore through his body. Even curled around his magby and wrapped in a thermal blanket, he couldn't stave off the chill seeping into his bones.

Cold.

The storm hit so quickly. The weather changed so abruptly. They didn't have time to find or make a truly resilient shelter. Daniel had Drift dig out a trench into the frigid ground large enough for him to lay down in to escape the wind. Daniel then staked his tent flat over the trench as an additional shield against the elements. Even with the added barrier, snow and wind seemed to constantly penetrate the meager refuge.

So cold.

If this storm lasted as long as the first, Daniel had no hope of surviving. As it was, he felt his chances dwindling faster than the minutes were passing. This was why so many people warned against him making this journey. Pokemon, while just as threatening, could be avoided or overcome. But the weather was unpredictable and unforgiving. Now that Daniel was within her grasp, she wasn't going to let him go.

Would this be his legacy? Would he serve as just another face and name in the crowd of other unfortunate - or foolish - first year trainers? Would Snowpoint use him to push even more prospective trainers away from their dreams and into the world of academia?

What would his parents think? They trusted in his decision making and his capabilities. Now they would lose their only child to the world because of his stubborn stupidity. What about Cal? The older trainer believed in him enough to gift him with a magby from his family's ranch.

What would happen to his pokemon?

Another brutal tremor rattled him, though he wasn't sure if it was from the cold or the thought of his pokemon being left alone in this storm. Even safely encapsulated in their pokeballs, they would likely never be found again as they would be lost with Daniel amidst the storm.

As if responding to his trainer's morbid train of thought, Kai coughed out a plume of black smoke. Daniel's heart twinged, knowing the smoke was a sign that his pokemon's health was deteriorating like his own. He mumbled an apology to his magby and returned him, though he immediately missed the heat source the fire type provided.

With Kai now safe within his pokeball, only Drift was left to accompany Daniel through the storm. The ice type sandshrew was made to withstand harsh wintry weather atop mountains, and he even seemed to enjoy being out in the storm. Drift would outlast the blizzard, though Daniel wasn't sure how his starter would fare being left alone in the middle of the snowy route.

Another gust of wind and snow pushed into the trench causing Daniel to violently shake from the cold. He heard Drift grunt out a warning. A moment later his starter began backing up against his feet, nudging him with concern. Daniel uncurled enough to investigate what had spooked his starter.

Though the lighting was poor, Daniel could still make out three orangish triangular shapes. Three pairs of bright blue eyes stared back at him. It took him a minute to recognize the creatures as snorunt. Though the small ice types were reclusive, they were thought to bring good fortune and prosperity to anyone it encountered, which was in stark contrast to its two evolved forms. Glalie were known to freeze travelers to feast upon while the fabled froslass were believed to display their frozen victims in macabre scenes for their own entertainment.

The snorunt at the front of the pack motioned him to follow before all three left the shelter. Drift looked at him before accompanying the trio. It took Daniel a few more moments to trust in his starter and exit his refuge.

He was immediately buffeted by gale force winds and ice that stung even through his thick jacket. Again his body convulsed due to the sheer cold, though he managed to remain upright. Once he overcame his body's response, he found that another two snorunt were outside the shelter along with the three he knew about.

When the pack of five saw him emerge, they set off into the storm with Drift following close behind. "Wait!" he called out as he knelt down to pack away his tent that had been covering the trench. The stakes had frozen into the ground causing Daniel to struggle to remove them. He frantically pulled harder as the snorunt and his starter disappeared from view. He called out again desperately.

He didn't know how long he struggled unsuccessfully to recover his tent, but eventually one of the snorunt reappeared. The small pokemon gestured for him to follow. When Daniel didn't obey, the ice type pointed its stubby arms to somewhere behind Daniel.

He turned, curious to what the pokemon was trying to show him. It took him a moment to notice a pair of blue lights rimmed in yellow that were glowing malevolently through the storm. The lights were slowly creeping closer, the malice in them growing more and more clear the closer they got.

Afraid of whatever was drawing near, Daniel scrambled after the retreating snorunt. He looked back once to lament his lost tent, hoping that it wouldn't affect him later on in his journey.

It didn't take long for him to catch up with the larger group of snorunt. Together they travelled slowly through the storm. Time and space became irrelevant as Daniel was unable to keep track of how long or far they walked. The only reference point he had was the pair of blue eyes behind them that was inching closer.

At some point during the journey, Daniel noticed, in a brief window of clarity, that his body stopped shaking. Energy seemed to flee from his body. His mind began to wonder, flitting from thought to thought without pattern. His gait became as ragged as his breath, staggering every couple steps.

Eventually they came across a log cabin, with soft glowing lights shining through the windows. One of the snorunt hurried ahead to knock on the door with its stubby arm. The world spun around Daniel and he turned back to face the storm.

Everything around him stopped spinning. The snow seemed suspended in midair and the wind calmed. From the storm emerged a beautiful woman floating towards him. She was dressed in the most elegant robe that was white as snow with a sash of scarlet wrapped around her waist to accentuate her curves. Her brilliant blue eyes beckoned him closer.

Somewhere behind him, Daniel heard yelling, though he ignored it in favor of the maiden before him. He stumbled forward, shedding his coat to move quicker to the enticing temptress. The shouting grew closer and something tugged on his pant leg. There was a flash of red light, a loud roar, and something hit Daniel in the back of the head. The world around him faded to black as he crumpled to the ground.

* * *

" _I'm going to be the greatest pokemon trainer ever!" declared the boy. The proclamation was met with a round of snorts from the boy's two companions._

_Daniel, Austin, and Brady - Daniel's two best childhood friends - were in the process of building a fort out of branches and rocks in Daniel's backyard. They were young. Daniel had been eight at the time. Austin and Brady were twins, with Austin just a couple minutes older than Brady._

_It was odd, watching a memory like a movie._

_Austin pushed his younger brother playfully, arguing, "Nuh-uh! I am going to be the best. Might as well start calling me Champion Austin now."_

_Daniel snickered at his friend, "Champions go by their last names. Everyone knows that!"_

_The younger brother laughed while the older one gave a faux pout. "So what are you gonna do, Danny? Gonna be the youngest gym leader or are you going for champion too?" Brady finally asked._

_Dream Daniel thought for a moment before responding, "No, I'm gonna explore the world! I'll get famous for some awesome discovery or something!"_

" _He thinks he's going to be next Cynthia," Austin said, dissolving into a fit of laughter. Cynthia was the famous champion of Sinnoh who abdicated her throne to explore the region. She was the last recorded person to have seen the legends Dialga and Palkia hundreds of years prior._

_Brady had a different response, "Yo, that would be so cool! What if you found some legendary god or something? What if you caught one?!"_

_Before either of the younger boys could respond, Daniel watched as their skin turned purple and their hair a shocking green. From the woods, a familiar woman dressed in white floated towards them._

* * *

"Pretty lady," Daniel muttered as he slipped into consciousness. His head throbbed and his body was overcome with chills.

He tried to pry his eyes open, but was only somewhat successful as they had crusted over with sleep. He saw a blurry pink blob move towards him and place what felt like a warm, wet washcloth over his forehead. A gentle melody filled the room and Daniel was lulled back to sleep.

* * *

" _Hey! You guys want to come over and explore the forest? Maybe see if we can't find any pokemon?" Daniel asked as he ran to catch up with his two friends._

_They had just finished the first week of high school. Daniel hadn't seen his friends much over the summer as they seemed to always be on some sort of trip with their parents. And the entire first week they had blown him off in favor of studying ahead._

_The brothers exchanged an uneasy glance before Austin responded, "I dunno, man. We have a lot of work to do this weekend."_

_Daniel pushed back, trying to appeal to the love of battling the twins shared, "We could head over to the gym and see if there are any late season challengers."_

_Brady was the one who shrugged him off his time, "Nah, there's some things we want to research when we get home tonight."_

" _What gives?" Daniel finally asked, "You guys disappear over the summer and now suddenly you don't want to go watch gym battles or try to find pokemon in the woods? You guys used to love that."_

" _We're in high school man! It's time for us all to grow up and start making real decisions about our future like adults."_

_Daniel was dumbstruck. "Grow up? Adults? We're freaking fourteen! And in case you forgot, pokemon training is a real career!"_

_The twins snorted before one of them shot back, "It's not a real career. You're barely going to make enough to survive unless you're a prodigy. A real career is a lawyer or doctor. If you want to be around pokemon so much, be a biologist. At least that is something Uxie would smile down on."_

" _Uxie can rot with Giratina for all I care," Daniel spat as he turned away from his friends. As he turned, there was a flash of bright red light, a loud roar, and something hit him in the back of the head._

He came back to the land of living with a groan. The world was still distorted and unclear when Daniel managed to crack his eyes open. Two figures stood at the edge of the room talking quietly to each other. A moment after he started waking up, the pair took notice.

"Hey there, Snorlax," one said, but Daniel was already falling back asleep, unable to muster the energy to remain awake.

* * *

" _Welcome to Basic Trainer Survival," the instructor started off the class. He looked to be about forty with peppered hair and pale skin. His voice was kind, but slightly gruff. "I like to start off each of these courses by going around the room and sharing your name and why you've decided to become a pokemon trainer. I'll start. My name is Tommy Rumley. I became a trainer twenty years ago because I wanted to become a gym leader. As you can tell, that didn't quite work out."_

_He pointed to a girl off to the side of the room who spoke up confidently, "My name is Taylor Bigelow. I want to become a zoologist. I don't want to work in a stuffy research lab though, so I'm going the trainer route."_

_The boy next to her followed stating that he wasn't able to afford going to college and chose to become a trainer instead of working in construction or fast food. Next boy had dropped out of college deciding that he'd rather become a field tech for a lab rather than become a professor. The last person before Daniel said he was given the choice of jail or becoming a trainer._

_It was one way the region kept people out of jail: by offering to let them become trainers. It was akin to dual enrollment. They attended survivor class during the day and a rehabilitation class in the evenings. After the first year, they would be given a pokemon to bond with while under the watchful eye of the League. Once they graduated the survivor class and a mental assessment, they were allowed to start their journey. Sinnoh boasted a seventy percent success rate for the system, though Daniel doubted that was entirely true._

_Once he was done, the class looked to Daniel. He was the last person to go. Every one of his peers had chosen this profession either to go into research or because they felt they had no other option. It was times like these that he really hated how revered Uxie was. Everyone wanted to go into academia, leaving him as the ugly ducklett._

" _I'm Daniel Pugh," he stated hesitantly, "I want to be a trainer to explore the world and compete with my team."_

_There was a snort from the boy who wanted to be a field tech, but no other response. After a moment, the instructor officially began the class, though his words were muffled. Wind started blowing through the room and snow gently fell from the ceiling. Daniel leaned back in his chair to investigate the phenomenon. As he did, he lost his balance and fell backwards._

* * *

Daniel jumped awake, his arms and legs flailing to keep himself from falling. It took a moment for him to realize that he was safe in a bed. As his heart rate settled, he took a moment to check in on his body and his surroundings. He was naked except for a pair of underwear, though he was warm from the numerous blankets wrapped tightly around him. Daniel attempted to shift his body around within the blanket burrito, only to wince in pain. His entire body was aching and sore.

The room he was in was fairly spartan. He was lying in one of three metal framed cots, though after the weeks he spent camping, it felt as if he was reclining on clouds. Along one wall was a long window that looked out into a bare hallway. Perpendicular to the window was a sink and a cabinet on the wall. Potions, gauze, and a box of gloves sat on the countertop next to the sink.

He found his clothing folded neatly upon an empty chair at his bedside. His pokédex had been carefully placed on top of the pile. He didn't see his pokeballs or any of his other supplies. He extracted himself from his warm cocoon to check his pokedex. He was shocked to find that half of November has passed. It took his wearied brain a minute to do the mental math and figure out that he had been unconscious for nearly two weeks. He had dozens of missed calls and messages from his parents emphasizing his absence.

He typed out a quick message to his worried parents before getting dressed. His parents were concerned, but he was okay and his priority was his absent team. His body protested loudly against even the simple motion of putting on his shirt. Every joint seemed to strain and pop at some point during the process.

Once dressed, he draped a blanket over his shoulders to help against the slight chill and exited the room. He followed the sound of voices to find two people lounging on a pair of couches watching and discussing a recorded battle. The pair both looked to be in their thirties, though the woman appeared to be a couple years older than her counterpart. Both had a couple pokeballs visible. A lycanroc raised its head from its paws to look at Daniel in the doorway, alerting the two trainers to his presence.

"He's finally awake!" the man exclaimed as he stood up from the couch. The lycanroc rose with the man, trailing gracefully just a step behind as the man approached Daniel. He was an inch or two taller than Daniel, with a thin brown beard.

The man clapped him on the shoulder as Daniel asked, "Where are my pokemon?" He was shocked at the gruff scratchiness that was his voice.

The man let out a snort and turned back to his partner who was now standing off to the side. "See, I told ya he'd want his team," the man said. The woman merely raised an eyebrow which the man waved off, "Yeah, yeah, I know. Didn't want him to wake up feeling confused and threatened with pokemon capable of burning the building down. There's a room downstairs you can let your team out safely. Come on, I'll show ya."

As Daniel followed the man, he learned that he was in one of the two ranger outposts along Route 217. His hosts, Rangers Julia Tiger and Adam Wilson, were the only ones at the outpost. The two stations along the most northern route were only staffed with a pair of rangers each during the winter season. This was due to the lack of travelers along the route during the time period.

Ranger Wilson explained that during the blizzard, the pair had been surprised to find a pack of snorunt banging on the door to the settlement. Their shock continued to grow as they found a trainer whose skin was beginning to turn blue out in the brutal storm being stalked by a froslass.

"It was terrifyin' honestly," the ranger said with a slight southern drawl, "the froslass fled once we came out guns blazin', but you were touch and go for a while. 'Cause of the storm, we couldn't teleport you out safely. Once it was over, you were stable and we were just waiting on you to wake up."

The ranger led him into a decently larger exercise room where the man's rock wolf took off, loping around the room joyfully. He handed Daniel his pokeballs and Daniel enjoyed an euphoric reunion with his team.

* * *

Daniel stayed with the rangers for a number of days following the storm. Part of him yearned to set back out on the road, but he knew that after an extended stint in bed, he needed to rest and strengthen his body before leaving. The ranger duo were nice. Ranger Tiger was strict, often telling her partner off for some shenanigan or another. Ranger Wilson was the younger of the two and a rock type specialist, though his character did not align with his type of choice.

Type specialists were a unique vein of trainers. They were people who chose to master in a specific type. These trainers were often at the forefront of research in their given types. Being a specialist was also a prerequisite of becoming either a gym leader or an Elite Four member. In order to gain the distinction of specialist, half of a trainer's team needed to be composed of the given type and the trainer needed to have all eight badges in the region.

Daniel spent much of his time in the exercise room, both for himself and to keep his pokemon in shape. Despite the mellow reunion, it took only a day for Kai and Slater to renew their feud. It started with the piplup giving the magby a contentious snort over some perceived slight. Within seconds Kai had tackled Slater and landed a thunder punch. The fight intensified from there to the point where Daniel had to return the pair to end it.

"You need to discipline them," a female voice spoke coldly from behind him. A rigid Ranger Tiger stood watching the events unfold with a bubbly wigglytuff bouncing in place beside her. The ranger stepped forward, continuing, "Allowing them to continue will only let their anger and resentment towards each other grow. You need to nip this in the bud."

Daniel had to physically bite his cheek to force back the initial, defensive response that welled within him. After a moment, he asked, "What do you suggest I do?"

"Isolation, make them forage or hunt for their own food, whatever. But you cannot allow that to continue if you truly want them to be a team," Tiger responded.

Daniel nodded slowly, "I was hoping that they would get over this after a couple fights. It seems to have only gotten worse. Are there other ways to help them bond?"

The ranger raised an eyebrow at him before releasing two of her pokemon. In a burst of red energy, a large ruby red lobster that stood nearly six foot tall appeared before him. The menacing pokemon snapped its pincers at Daniel in warning but remained stationary. Beside the water type was a lithe, orange monkey. The ape stood a foot shorter than its companion, though the flames on its head rose above the lobster's star crown. It bounced lightly on its feet and flexed its fists.

"Blaine and Tamatoa, similar to your magby and piplup, are fundamentally different. Not only are fire and water opposites, but fighting and dark types are opposites as well, exacerbating the issue. Fire types are, for lack of a better term, fiery. They burn hot, they do not want to be put out, and they want to be the center of attention. Water types are proud. They are stubborn in their pursuit yet flexible in how they push. They are resilient, and though they recede for a time, they will come back with a vengeance."

The ranger paused and stepped between her infernape and crawdaunt, carefully stroking the fire type's back while avoiding its flaming head. "I had to teach them to work together," she said about her pokemon, "And until they learned, I needed an outlet to control their anger and aggression towards each other. Give them tasks and set boundaries. It will take time, but you will be a better trainer for it."

Daniel nodded and thanked the ranger as she walked out of the training room. After a few moments, he released the difficult duo and demanded their attention with a loud yell.

"Listen up! This petty feud ends now." The pair glared back at Daniel contentiously, but he soldiered on, "You guys are teammates. You are brothers. So you're going to have to learn how to work together and not hate each other. Starting now, you are not allowed to fight. If I catch either of you throwing the first punch, you're going into your ball for twenty-four hours. If I can't figure out who started it, you're both being punished. So I suggest you both get it into your heads that this is a permanent partnership."

The rest of his time at the outpost was spent relaxing and enjoying the company of the older trainers. The pair both enjoyed watching and dissecting competitive battles. Gyms, due to the type and team restrictions, were seen as just a test of the trainer's ability and the team's overall strength. Tournaments were where truly competitive battles were seen, matching the elite battlers against others of the same skill level.

One afternoon, when they were watching the Professional Battlers' Network, the battle they were watching was interrupted by a breaking news alert.

"Sinnoh's Master Elder Stefano Burgess just announced," a pretty blonde reporter said, popping up on the screen, "that he will be transitioning out of his role of Master Elder. The transition will be gradual and he will remain in Ace in an advisory role. Though his replacement has yet to be announced, the most likely candidate is the Elder Sentinel Kenneth Brady, who is the longest tenured Elder."

Ace acted as Sinnoh's military force. It consisted of four different branches, each specializing in a different type of combat - ground, naval, and aerial - and an intelligence branch. Daniel didn't know much about Ace's hierarchy, but he knew that each branch was headed by an elder who only answered to the Master Elder, or the head of Ace. There were rumors that Ace had a fifth branch that trained assassins, but no one had any proof of it.

"Holy Giratina," Ranger Wilson breathed from the couch next Daniel.

The reporter continued, "Master Elder Burgess has officially stated that the reason for his departure is due to his desire to explore more. Though with the Lily of the Valley Conference expected to begin in three to four months, many believe that the Master Elder will be taking the time to shake off the rust before returning to a battle stadium and possibly beginning his campaign to challenge Champion Aleph Akai.

"Burgess has been commonly referred to as Champion Akai's only rival. The two famously met in the 2416 Junior Lily of the Valley Conference Finals where Burgess overcame Akai. Afterwards, the two reportedly battled each other on multiple occasions but did not meet in any official capacity until the 2424 Lily of the Valley Finals where Akai was victorious. From there Burgess rose through the Ace ranks, becoming the youngest Elder Corsair at the age of thirty-five and then Master Elder a mere five years later where he has served since."

"I heard he has a wailord," Wilson said.

Daniel and Ranger Tiger both snorted at the comment. "And how, exactly, is someone supposed to train a wailord?"

"I don't know! The man's a legend though. All the navy guys I know talk about him like he's some sort of deity."

"Wait," Daniel interrupted, "You saying deity reminded me. Did you call Giratina 'holy' earlier?!"

Again Ranger Tiger snorted mirthfully while her counterpart looked around shiftily. After a moment, Wilson responded, "Well, yeah. He is. The rest of Sinnoh might have forgotten, but those of us from Sandgem remember Giratina. One day, he will be justified before Arceus as his brothers are scorned."

The female ranger broke down in laughter, muttering something about hicks and rednecks whenever she managed to get a word out. Ranger Wilson scowled at her before grabbing a pen and paper and scrawled something out. He handed the paper to Daniel once he was done writing.

"So you actually worship Dialga but act like you worship Giratina out of what? Fear? And you're trying to tell me that Giratina can hear your words but can't read? How in distortion is that plausible?!"

"He's a pokemon! Pokemon can't read."

Daniel snorted out his rebuttal before following Ranger Tiger into a fit of laughter, "He's a god!"

* * *

After a week at the Ranger Outpost, Daniel was ready to leave. His mind was antsy and itching to get back on the road. And though his body still ached, he felt strong enough to continue traveling. The only issue he faced was he no longer had a tent to camp in.

"Ranger Wilson?" he asked the younger ranger the morning he intended to leave, "I wasn't able to recover my tent in that last blizzard before coming here. Is there any way I can take one from you guys?"

The bearded man glanced at him and began typing on his phone as he asked, "Plannin' on leaving then?"

Daniel gave a nervous chuckle, "Yeah. I'm getting jumpy and want to get back out there."

"Well that ain't happenin'." The ranger was still scrolling through his phone, not yet looking up at Daniel.

"What?"

"Yeah, can't let you go. First off, Tiger would have my hide. Second, you just came out of a two week long coma from severe hypothermia. You're not exactly in top shape," Wilson finally looked up at him and continued, "And then there's a storm supposed to roll through next week. I can't let you leave, kid."

Indignant, Daniel shot back, "I have survived a blizzard! I can make it just fine!"

The ranger snorted, "Listen Daniel, you're tough. You're smart. But I can't let you go back out. What happens when your froslass friend comes back to finish what she started? Or the storm hits two days early and you're left in a trench for another week? Can't do it kid."

"I thought trainers were supposed to prove themselves by braving the wilderness and the unknown with just their pokemon at their side. Guess that's just fairy tales then, huh?" He knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he really didn't care at this point.

Ranger Wilson glared back at him, "Get your head out of your ass, Daniel and stop being so damned stupid. Your team consists of a few one badge pokemon, none of which will actually help you in the face of the storm. So stop being so stupidly stubborn and think! Think about yourself. Think about your pokemon!"

Stupidly stubborn. Daniel blinked. The words coming from the ranger were eerily similar to the thoughts he'd had while trying to weather the storm before the snorunt saved him. What would happen to his pokemon should the worst happen? What would his parents think? What would Cal? He blinked again before refocusing on the ranger.

"You're right, sir," he said with a respectful bow of his head, "I'm sorry I snapped at you, you're just doing your job and I was being an ass."

"I was a rookie trainer like yourself too, Daniel. No need to apologize, just don't let your emotions and desires cloud your judgement."

Daniel nodded, "Yes sir. Ranger Wilson? You mentioned when I woke up that you guys wanted to transport me to a hospital while I was unconscious but couldn't because of the storm. Is it possible for you to teleport me to Eterna now before the next one hits?"

The ranger regarded him coolly before responding, "I'll check with Jules, but yeah, we should be able to do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trainer: Daniel Pugh - 1 Badge  
> Alolan Sandshrew - Drift  
> Meditite - Sasha  
> Magby - Kai  
> Piplup - Slater
> 
> AN: This was a fun chapter for me. Aside from Blizzard 2.0 as my beta (thanks again Silder) termed it, it seems mostly filler-ish, but there's a lot of fun world building here, which I love. There were a couple years mentioned in the story. These are arbitrary. They have literally no importance.


End file.
